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Walt Mason 




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WALT MASON 



HIS BOOK 



With an Introduction 
By Irvin S. Cobb 



Illustrated 



New York 

Barse & H opkins 

Publishers 






This book is compiled from a careful selection of the best prose 

poems of Walt Mason. 

Acknowledgment is made for the use of these poems to Walt Mason 
and George Matthew Adams. 



Copyright, 1911, by George Matthew Adams. 
Copyright, jpi6, by Barse & Hopkins. 



All rights reserved. 



MAY 24i9l6 



0)CI.A43;j1i9 



To ELLA FOSS MASON 



Who's read my stuff daily, 
A long, happy time, 

I dedicate gay ly 

This package of rhyme. 



Cobb's Masonism 



Ihave never met Walt Mason — that is, I've 
never met him face to face. By the same 
token he has never met me. So the benefit 
to date is as much his as it is mine. We are 
splitting our blessings, fifty-fifty. 

I have never met him but I have seen his pic- 
ture. I have a feeling that his picture will be 
printed in this, the fifth volume of his assembled 
works. This the publisher will do to keep peo- 
ple from saying Mason's verse is the homeliest 
thing in the book. 

Well, quite a number of us are doing very lit- 
tle in the pretty line this year. 

Looking at his likeness I visualize the man 
who posed for it. He is set solid, like his 
rhymes. Actuated by the spirit of the Initiative 
and Referendum, which I believe also originated 
in his native Kansas, his nose started to go away 
from here but was subjected to the Recall in time 
to prevent it from leaving entirely. He has, as I 
observe, a mouth built for a blueberry pie. I 
suspect him of being addicted to chewing tobacco 
and corn on the ear. He wears one of those 
loose-fitting, home-shaped Kansas collars which 
give the blood a chance to circulate to the brain 
and at the same time permit the Adam's apple to 
exercise its ordained functions. I'll risk any 
amount within reason that he wears fifty-cent 
suspenders and utters low glad cries when he 
pulls his shoes off. In short, I gather from his 
portrait that Walt Mason, to look at, is just ex- 
actly the kind of person Walt Mason should be, 
to look at. 

I repeat it. I have never seen him. But I 
read his verses. I read them at dewy eve, and 
then my dewy eve is a success. Give me this day 
my daily Walt Mason — that is part of my morn- 
ing prayer. And at night time he comes and 
answers me my prayer. 



Cobb's M a s o n 1 s m 



George Ade said it — "Mason is the high priest 
of horse sense." He is the sweet singer of our 
American Israel. Because he says a thing in his 
own way, he says it the way the average Ameri- 
can would say it, if he could only say it that way. 
Any one of us may have the thought but to him 
is given the gift of expression. He whangs a 
home-made harp and because it is home-made, — 
because it voices the true homely, plain, honest- 
to-God sentiments of the real people in a homely 
fashion, because it rings with a sweetness, a san- 
ity and a wit that belongs to that old low-combed, 
red-necked Kansas rooster, in a greater degree 
than to any other being known to me as resident 
upon this planet at the present moment — we love 
the Harpist and we love the Tune. 

Poets come and poets go. Some of them never 
arrive and some of them start going before they 
get through coming. There have been poets that 
I, personally, could spare without a pang, and 
poets that I could strangle M'ith my bare hands 
and feel no pricks of conscience thereafter. But 
there are two poets among us that I want to go 
on living forever, since each of them in his own 
rhymstering sphere, knows the wondrous trick 
of finding always the right word for the right 
place. These two, between them, sweeten our 
day for us with the sugar of philosophy, salt it 
with the savors of wisdom and human under- 
standing, and richen it with the music of their 
art. One of them is James Whitcomb Riley. 
The other is Walt Mason — and both of them are 
the poets of the plain people. 



%h::^.(^ 



p. S. — Mind you, as I said before, I've never 
seen Walt Mason — only his picture. 



o n t e n t s 



The Welcome Man 17 

Confidence 18 

Forget It 19 

Conscience 20 

The Old Prayer 21 

Aifectation 22 

Hatred 23 

The Has Beens 24 

The Missus 25 

Pretty Good Schemes 26 

Keeping Things Neat 27 

The Long Road 28 

The Penny Sav^d 29 

Humility 30 

The Veiled Future 31 

'Little Pilgrims 33 

Better Than Boodle 34 

Put It on Ice 35 

Bad Cooking 36 

The Universal Help 37 

The Conqueror 38 

Politeness 39 

Progressive Doctoring 40 

Methuselah 41 

Unappreciated 42 

The Grouch 43 

The Hand Out "... 44 

The Optimist 45 

Good Credit 46 

Little Things 47 

Selfishness 48 

The Old Virtues 49 

Eating Too Much 50 

The Speech Makers 51 

A Few Remarks 52 

Your Own Town 53 

Illustration 54 

A Glance at History 55 

Longfellow 56 

Home and Mother 57 

In Politics 58 

The Human Head 59 



Content S — Continued 



The Famous Four 60 

Little Sunbeam 61 

A Rainy Night 62 

The Flag 63 

Little Girl 64 

Beryl's Boudoir 65 

Post Mortem Honors 67 

After a While 68 

The Landlady 69 

Knowledge by Mail 70 

Duke and Plumber 71 

Human Hands 72 

The Lost Pipe 73 

Thanksgiving 74 

Twilight Reveries 75 

King and Kid 76 

Useless Griefs 77 

The Little Green Tents 78 

Letting It Along 79 

End of the Road 80 

The Dying Fisherman 81 

The Venerable Excuse 82 

The Smart Children 83 

The Journey 85 

Times Have Changed 86 

My Little Dog 87 

Silver Threads 88 

Tired Man's Sleep 89 

To-morrow 90 

Toothache 9^ 

Auf Wiedersehen 92 

After the Game 93 

Nero's Fiddle 94 

The Real Terror 95 

The Talksmiths 96 

Woman's Progress 97 

The Magic Mirror 99 

The Misfit Face . 100 

A Dog Story 101 

The Pitcher , 102 

Lions and Ants 103 

The Nameless Dead 104 



Content S — Continued 



Ambition io5 

Night's Illusions io6 

Before and After 107 

The Poet Balks ic3 

Governed Too Much 109 

Success in Life ^^^ 

Home Life i" 

Eagles and Hens 112 

Weary Old Age "3 

Lullaby "4 

The Schoolmarm ^^5 

The Sunday Paper "6 

Gay Parents ^^7 

Dad 118 

John Bunyan 119 

A Near Anthem 121 

The Nation's Hope 122 

The Important Man 123 

Toddling Home 124 

Trifling Things 125 

Trusty Dobbin 126 

The High Prices 127 

Omar Khayyam 128 

Knowledge Is Power 129 

Physical Culture 131 

Football 132 

The Broncho 133 

Schubert's Serenade '35 

Health Food 136 

Fashion's Devotee ^37 

Christmas 138 

The Tightwad i39 

Blue Blood 140 

The Cave Man 141 

The Eyes of Lincoln 142 

In Indiana ^43 

The Better Land i44 

The June Bride HS 

At the Theatre H^ 

Club Day Dirge ^47 

Washington ^49 

Hours and Pomes ^5° 



Content S — Continued 



The Pie Eaters 151 

Poor Father 152 

He Who Forgets 153 

The Umpire '. i54 

Sherlock Holmes 155 

The Sanctuary 156 

The Newspaper Graveyard 157 

My Lady's Hair 158 

The Sick Minstrel i59 

The Beggar 160 

Looking Forward 161 

The Depot Loafers 162 

The Foolish Husband 163 

Hallowe'en 165 

Rienzi to the Romans 166 

The Sorrel Colt 167 

The Sexton's Inn 168 

Mail Order Clothes 169 

Evening 170 

They All Come Back 171 

The Cussing Habit 172 

John Bull 173 

An Oversight 174 

The Traveler 175 

Saturday Night 176 

Lady Nicotine 177 

Up-to-Date Serenade 179 

The Consumer i8o 

Advice to a Damsel 181 

A New Year Vow 182 

The Stricken Toiler 183 

The Lawbooks 184 

Sleuths of Fiction 185 

The Idle Question 186 

The Philanthropist 187 

Other Days 188 

The Passing Year 189 



Walt Mason 



THERE'S a man In the world who is 
never turned down, wherever he 
chances to stray; he gets the glad 
hand in the populous town, or out where the 
farmers make hay; he's greeted with pleas- 
ure on deserts of sand, and deep in the 
aisles of the woods ; wherever he goes there's 
the welcoming hand — he's The Man Who 
Delivers the Goods. The failures of life 
sit around and complain; the gods haven't 
treated them white; they've lost their um- 
brellas whenever there's rain, and they 
haven't their lanterns at night; men tire of 
the failures who fill with their sighs the air 
of their own neighborhoods; there's one 
who is greeted with love-lighted eyes — he's 
The Man Who Delivers the Goods. One 
fellow is lazy, and watches the clock, and 
waits for the whistle to blow; and one has 
a hammer, with which he will knock, and 
one tells a story of woe; and one, if re- 
quested to travel a mile, will measure the 
perches and roods; but one does his stunt 
with a whistle or smile — he's The Man 
Who Delivers the Goods, One man is 
afraid that he'll labor too hard — the world 
isn't yearning for such; and one man is al- 
ways alert, on his guard, lest he put in a 
minute too much; and one has a grouch or 
a temper that's bad, and one is a creature 
of moods; so it's hey for the joyous and 
rollicking lad — for the One Who Delivers 
the Goods! 



The 

Welcome 

Man 



[17] 



Confidence 



Walt Mason 



[i8] 



I KNOW a man who hunts for snakes, 
and kills them for their grease. He 
says 'twill cure rheumatic aches, and 
make your anguish cease. The doctors say 
that serpent oil no sort of virtue owns; it 
will not cure the pains that coil around your 
joints and bones. But this old gun who 
kills the snakes has never had a doubt; he 
says all other cures are fakes, when reptile 
oil's about. He is so everlasting sure that 
what he says is true, that even skeptics buy 
his "cure," to see what it will do. And so 
it keeps him toiling hard, the keen demand 
to meet, and he has bought with buUsnake 
lard a home in Easy street. If you believe 
in what you sell, have faith in what you say, 
in that same avenue you'll dwell, upon a fu- 
ture day. If one is not supremely sure that 
what he has for sale makes all competitors 
look poor, his eloquence will fail. A man 
can sell me setting hens, or swarms of bum- 
ble bees, or double action fountain pens, or 
cures for housemaids' knees, if he's con- 
vinced that what he sells beats everything 
around; that sort of salesman's wearing 
bells, wherever he is found. 



Walt Mason 



IF you detest this vale of tears, forget 
it! If you've a whine for victims' 
ears, forget it; the folks who toddle 
to and fro and do their duties as they go 
don't care about your tale of woe — forget 
it. You think your mission is to teach? 
Forget it. You'd like a chance to make a 
speech? Forget it. Too many men like 
you have sinned by giving us less work 
than wind; if you to noise your faith have 
pinned, forget it. You say the laws are all 
unjust? Forget it. They grind the poor 
man's face to dust? Forget it. The poor 
man who neglects his jaw to do a stunt with 
axe or saw will have no trouble with the 
law — forget it. You say your neighbors 
are unkind? Forget it. They prosecute 
and rob you blind? Forget it. For folks 
are pretty much the same; the man who 
roars is most to blame; they'll treat you as 
you play the game; forget it. You have 
some gossip to relate? Forget it. A scan- 
dal never pays the freight — forget it. A 
hundred bosoms have been wrung by evil 
stories you have sprung; if you've another 
on your tongue, forget it. 



Forget It 



.[19]. 



Conscience 



[20] 



Walt Mason 



1 BELIEVE a fellow's conscience is a 
pretty faithful guide; if he follows 
where 'twould lead him, he won't 
stray so very wide. When I'm hustling for 
a living in the city's busy mart, I'm so full 
of schemes resplendent that the voice down 
in my heart doesn't have a chance to warn 
me and I do some doubtful trick, going to 
my shack at evening feeling sure that I'm a 
brick. When a man has nailed some 
roubles in a smooth and quiet way, he is full 
of triumph and he hands himself a large 
bouquet. I have often felt exalted by my 
conquest of the plunk, till I shed my gaudy 
raiment, and lie down upon my bunk. 
Then my good old conscience prods me, in 
the silence and the dark, and it shows me 
that my doings are the doings of a shark. 
"It is better," says my conscience, holding 
down the judgment seat, "it is better to be 
honest, and barefooted walk the street, than 
to count a pile of dollars won by trickery or 
fraud ; till you've squared your evil-doing I 
shall never cease to prod." So my con- 
science sits in judgment through the watches 
of the night, and in following its hunches I 
am sure I'm doing right. 



Walt Mason 



WHEN the evening shadows fall, 
oftentimes do I recall other even- 
ings, far away, when, aweary of my 
play, I would climb on granny's knee (long 
since gone to sleep has she), clasp my hands 
and bow my head, while the simple lines I 
said, "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray 
the Lord my soul to keep." Journeyed 
long have I since then, in this sad, gray 
world of men; I have seen with aching 
heart, comrades to their rest depart; friends 
have left me, one by one, for the shores be- 
yond the sun. Still the Youth enraptured 
sings, and the world with gladness rings, 
but the faces I have known all are gone, and 
I'm alone. All alone, amid the throng, I, 
who've lived and journeyed long. Loneli- 
ness and sighs and tears are the wages of the 
years. Who would dread the journey's 
end, when he lives without a friend? Now 
the sun of life sinks low; in a little while 
I'll go where my friends and comrades wait 
for me by the jasper gate. Though the wayjl 



be cold and stark, I shall murmur, in the 
•dark, "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray 
the Lord my soul to keep." 



The Old 
Prayer 



[21] 



Affectation 



Walt Mason 



[22] 



THE men of simple manners please; 
they boast not of their pedigrees, or 
look profound, or put on side, or get 
swelled up with futile pride. The wise 
man's every action states, "I'm just like other 
mortal skates; I'm here a while to toil and 
spin, and try to get my harvest in, and when 
I leave this vale of groans, like Tom and 
Dick, I'll make dry bones." It gives me 
stitches in the side to see a man swelled up 
with pride, assuming divers foolish airs, and 
who, in every act, declares, "The clay I'm 
made of is so fine, there wasn't any more 
like mine. When I was formed, one fate- 
ful day, the Maker threw the mold away, 
and said, 'Improvements now shall cease — 
I have produced the masterpiece!'" 
When your importance seems so steep that 
all the rest of us look cheap, laugh at your- 
self a while, my friend, and let your affec- 
tation end. Sit down in silence and review 
the foolish things you say and do, and real- 
ize, with many a jar, how blamed ridiculous 
you are! 



Walt Mason 



I HATE a lot of men, I wist; I'd camp 
upon their frames, but when I try to 
make a list, I can't recall their names. 
I should resent the evil flings from this or 
that old scout, but there are far more pleas- 
ant things that I can think about. Old 
Weatherwax has done me ill, here in my 
native town, and every day he tries to kill 
my twenty-cent renown ; I've heard the evil 
things he's said, and yet I don't repine; and 
if I tried to punch his head, he'd surely land 
on mine. Vain is the effort to defend one's 
fame from such attacks; I'd rather gossip 
with a friend than scrap with Weatherwax. 
I do not care what people say, words leave 
no smarts or stings ; and every passing, sunny 
day is full of pleasant things. Why should 
I miss the sight of birds, as to the South they 
go, to stand around and bandy words with 
some long-winded foe?^ Why should I har- 
bor thoughts of hate, when there are au- 
thors near, with healthy stories to relate, 
and pomes that soothe and cheer? Why 
should I hold a vengeful mind, when it is 
best to laugh, when I can sit around and 
grind chunes from my phonograph? 



Hatred 



[23] 



The 
Has-Beens 



P24] 



Walt Mason 



1READ the papers every day, and oft 
encounter tales which show there's 
hope for every jay who in life's battle 
fails. I've just been reading of a gent who 
joined the has-been ranks, at fifty years 
without a cent, or credit at the banks. But 
undismayed he buckled down, refusing to 
be beat, and captured fortune and renown; 
he's now in Easy street. Men say that fel- 
lows down and out ne'er leave the rocky 
track, but facts will show, beyond a doubt, 
that has-beens do come back. I know, for 
I who write this rhyme, when forty-odd 
years old, was down and out, without a 
dime, my whiskers full of mold. By black 
disaster I was trounced until it jarred my 
spine; I was a failure so pronounced I 
didn't need a sign. And after I had soaked 
my coat, I said (at forty-three), ''I'll see if 
I can catch the goat that has escaped from 
me." I labored hard; I strained my dome, 
to do my daily grind, until in triumph I 
came home, my billy-goat behind. And 
any man who still has health may with the 
winners stack, and have a chance at fame 
and wealth — for has-beens do come back. 



Walt Mason 



BE kind to the missus, who spends the 
long days in making your home worth 
the while, be free with encourage- 
ment, gratitude, praise, and hand her a cor- 
pulent smile. You go to your home from 
your job in the mart, and talk of the bur- 
dens you've borne, the cares that are rack- 
ing your galvanized heart, the ills that are 
making you mourn. Sweet sympathy 
comes from the lips of your wife, and love 
is aglow on her face; the burdens and cares 
of her own weary life have nothing to do 
with the case. Suppose you forget your 
own troubles and woes, and think of the 
woes of the frau, whose cheeks long ago 
lost the bloom of the rose, while wrinkles 
increased on her brow. Suppose you re- 
member the work she has done, the endless 
routine of the years, the toil from the rising 
to setting of sun, and always with work in 
arrears. Suppose you remember when she 
was a maid, and you were a love-smitten 
boy; you painted the future in opulent 
shade, and promised her comfort and joy. 
The missus will toil till she drops in her 
tracks, and goes to the rest up above, ignor- 
ing the pain and the strain and the tax, and 
all she's expecting is love. 



The Missus 



[25] 



Pretty 

Good 

Schemes 



[26] 



Walt Mason 



IT'S a pretty good scheme to be cheery, 
and sing as you follow the road, for a 
good many pilgrims are weary, and 
hopelessly carry the load ; their hearts from 
the journey are breaking, and a rod seems 
to them like a mile; and it may be the noise 
you are making will hearten them up for 
a while. It's a pretty good scheme in your 
joking, to cut out the jest that's unkind, for 
the barbed kind of fun you are poking, 
some fellow may carry in mind; and a good 
many hearts have been broken, a good 
many hearts fond and true, by words that 
were carelessly spoken by alecky fellows 
like you. It's a pretty good scheme to be 
doing some choring around while you can; 
for the gods with their gifts are pursuing 
the earnest industrious man; and those 
gods, in their own El Dorado, are laying 
up wrath for the one who loafs all the day 
in the shadow, while others toil, out in the 
sun. 



Walt Mason 



YOU plant a rosebush by your door, and 
morning glories three or four; you 
mow the lawn when whiskers green 
upon its countenance are seen; you take the 
dead cats to the dump, and fix the fence and 
paint the pump, and trim the figtree and the 
vine, and make the doorknob fairly shine. 
And neighbors who have gone to seed, 
whose lots are grown to grass and weed, 
will soon or late observe your game, and 
feel a burning sense of shame. They'll say, 
"That fellow's place, so neat, is quite the 
smoothest on the street; it makes ours look 
like also-rans, so we'll adopt that smarty's 
plans, and prove to him that other jays can 
well deserve the public praise." I've seen 
a neighborhood that lay all ragged, gone to 
brush and hay, brace up and bloom to beat 
the band because some pilgrim, tools in 
hand, cleaned up his lawn and pruned his 
trees, and bought some flowers and bumble- 
bees. Thus good examples spur the souls 
of men who've crawled into their holes, 
content to let the whole world slide, the tail 
connected with the hide. 



Keeping 
Things Neat 



[27] 



The Long 
Road 



[28] 



Walt Mason 



THAT roads are long to Easy street, is 
true — all winners preach it; and if 
you move on sluggish feet, it's doubt- 
ful if you'll reach it. I see some lads who 
work for hire their leaden trilbys dragging; 
the smallest effort makes them tire, and all 
they know is lagging. They face their 
work with dismal croaks, and grumblings 
stale and wheezy; they'll never bask be- 
neath the oaks that line the street called 
Easy. The road is long to Easy street, too 
rough for any telling, and one must tireless 
be and fleet who there would have his 
dwelling. Oh, watch the men who there 
abide, the men who dance and gambol, and 
you will see upon each hide the scar of stone 
and bramble. They met disaster with a 
smile, their mien was bold and breezy, they 
vaulted over fence and stile, and reached the 
street called Easy. The sluggard who is so 
afraid that he too hard will labor, will loaf 
and languish in the shade and cuss his win- 
ning neighbor; and each misfortune over- 
whelms this man with spirit cheesey; he'll 
never rest beneath the elms that line the 
street called Easy. 



Walt Mason 



IT IS WISE to save the pennies when 
the pennies come your way, for you're 
more than apt to need them when ar- 
rives the rainy day; and when Famine 
comes a-whooping with the cross-bones on 
her vest, then the fellow with the bundle 
has the edge on all the rest. I admire the 
man who's saving, if he doesn't save too 
hard, if he doesn't think a dollar bigger 
than the courthouse yard; and I like to see 
him salting down the riches that he's struck, 
if he always has a quarter for the guy that's 
out of luck. When the winter comes upon 
us, yelling like a baseball fan, then it's nice 
to have some boodle in an old tomato can; 
when there's sickness in the wigwam, and 
we have to call the doc, then it's nice to have 
a package hidden in the eight-day clock; 
when Old Age, the hoary rascal, comes a- 
butting in at last, then it's nice to have some 
rubles that you cornered in the past; and 
the man who saves the pennies is a dandy 
and a duck — if he always has a quarter for 
the guy that's out of luck. 



The Penny 
Saved 



[29] 



Humility 



[30] 



Walt Mason 



DON'T let your head swell up too 
greatly; don't let your stride be too 
blamed stately. For, though you 
rank with high class peaches, some other 
pebbles line the beaches. If into fame you 
think you're butting, be modest still, and do 
no strutting; whatever line of work you fol- 
low, some other chaps can beat you hollow. 
Perhaps you're writing fine romances, 
whose sale to figures huge advances; but 
when the pride within you quickens, re- 
member Bulwer, Scott and Dickens; their 
fame will live till worlds grew hoary, and 
perished is your jimcrow glory. Perhaps 
you're painting classy pictures, which have 
received more praise than strictures, and 
you bulge out your chest and chortle, and 
think you're surely an immortal. But all 
your works are mere disasters, compared 
with chromos by the masters. Whatever 
graft you are pursuing, whatever fancy 
stunt you're doing, it is becoming to be 
modest, for when your fame is at its broad- 
est, it still looks cheap to men surrounding, 
beside great names, down ages sounding. 
No human being should envelope himself 
with majesty, and swell up, as though he 
had a halo o'er him — for greater men have 
gone before him. 



Walt Mason 



WE know not what a day shall bring, 
what brand of weal or woe; so let 
us smile and let us sing, and trip 
fantastic toe. We may feel sure tomor- 
row's sun will hide, the whole day long; 
and when all things are said and done, our 
guesses will be wrong. We may insist that 
dark green grief tomorrow's brow will 
wear; and yet the dawn may bring relief 
from all the woes we bear. No man should 
look ahead and say, "Tomorrow is a frost, 
so I shall wail around today, and weep, and 
blame the cost." And so, as I have often 
said, in dirges fierce but brief, it's foolish- 
ment to look ahead for further stores of 
grief. It's vain to rend our beards and say, 
"Tomorrow's charged with fate"; far bet- 
ter to enjoy today, before it pulls its freight. 
This day is ours, this cheerful morn ; all yes- 
terdays are dead; all other days are yet un- 
born, the stretch of days ahead. This day 
is ours, the dear, sweet thing, until it ambles 
by; so let us dance and let us sing, and throw 
our hats on high. 



The Veiled 
Future 



DO 




"We are ijueary little pilgrims, straying in 
a nuorld of gloom. " 



Walt Mason 



WE ARE weary little pilgrims, stray- 
ing in a world of gloom; just be- 
hind us is the cradle, just before us 
is the tomb ; there is nothing much to guide 
us, or the proper path to mark, as we toddle 
on our journey, little pilgrims in the dark. 
And we jostle, and we struggle, in our 
feeble, futile wrath, always striving, always 
reaching to push others from the path ; and 
the wrangling and the jangling of our peev- 
ish voices rise, to the seraphim that watch us 
through the starholes in the skies ; and they 
say: "The foolish pilgrims! Watch them 
as they push and shove! They might have 
a pleasant ramble, if their hearts were full 
of love, if they'd help and cheer each other 
from the hour that they embark — but 
they're only blind and erring little pilgrims 
in the dark!" 



Little 
Pilgrims 



[.iz\ 



Better 

Than 

Boodle 



Walt Mason 



[34] 



IF YOU help a busted pilgrim, who's 
been out of luck a while, if you stake 
him with a dollar and a stogie and a 
smile, and you see his haggard features light 
up with a glow of joy, and you hear him 
try to murmur that you are a bully boy, 
then you'll get a lot of pleasure from the 
life you're leading here; there are better 
things than boodle in this little whirling 
sphere. If you write a friendly letter to 
some fellow far away, who's so weary and 
so homesick that his hair is turning gray, 
he will feel a whole lot better, and the cheer- 
up smile will come, and he'll sail into his 
duties in a way to make things hum; then 
you've done a thing to help you when St. 
Peter calls your name; there are better 
things than boodle in this little human 
game. If you see a man a-struggling to 
regain some ground he's lost, some one 
who's been up against it, knocked about 
and tempest tossed, and you turn around 
and help him to his place with other men, 
crying shame upon the knockers who would 
drag him down again, then you've shown 
that you're a critter of a princely strain of 
blood; there are better things than boodle 
on this little ball of mud. 



Walt Mason 



WHEN YOU have written a letter 
red hot, roasting some chap in his 
tenderest spot — some one who's 
done you an underhand trick, some one 
who's wounded your pride to the quick; 
try to remember that writing abuse does 
no more good than the hiss of a goose; this 
is the meaning of all of your sass : "You are 
a villain — and I am an ass." Take up your 
letter and read it through thrice; put it on 
ice awhile, put it on ice! Maybe your wife 
isn't much of a cook; maybe she'd rather 
sit down with a book, than to go fussing 
around making pies, doughnuts and cakes 
and things good to your eyes; you are pre- 
paring a withering speech, you are prepar- 
ing to rear up and preach, telling your wife 
of the beautiful things cooked by your 
granny before she had wings; telling your 
wife that her duty's to stuff things in your 
tummy till it has enough. When you went 
courting that hausfrau of yours, swearing 
you'd love her while nature endures, did 
you get down on your knee-bones and rave: 
''Dearest, I'm needing a drudge and a 
slave! Come to my cottage and sweep, 
cook and scrub! Clean up the dishes and 
sweat at the tub!" Can the reproaches 
you're planning to make; go to a baker 
when spoiling for cake. Cut out the ser- 
mon you think is so nice — put it on ice 
awhile, put it on ice! 



Put It 
On Ice 



[35] 



Bad 

Cooking 



Walt Mason 



WHAT is it roughens true love's 
course, and makes men cuss till 
they are hoarse, and leads to quar- 
rels and divorce? Bad cooking. What is 
it ruins love's young dream, and queers the 
matrimonial team, and makes the married 
life a scream? Bad cooking. What is it 
comes when women prance to euchre party 
and to dance, and leave the home at every 
chance? Bad cooking. What follows 
when the girls grow smart, and say they're 
wedded to their Art, and learn some Ibsen 
junk by heart? Bad cooking. What hap- 
pens when they play the harp as well as 
some imported sharp, instead of frying Ger- 
man carp? Bad cooking. What is it fills 
untimely graves, out where the boneyard 
bluegrass waves, with victims of the kitchen 
knaves? Bad cooking. What is it drives 
the boys from home, in glaring, noisy dens 
to roam, and from cold steins to blow the 
foam? Bad cooking. Why are the people 
taking pills, and medicine in flowing rills, 
and always paying doctors' bills? Bad 
cooking. 



[36] 



Walt Mason 



MY cow's gone dry, my hens won't lay, 
my horse has got the croup ; the hot 
winds spoiled my budding hay, and 
I am in the soup. And while my life is sad 
and sore, and earthly joys are few, I'll 
write a note to Theodore; he'll tell me 
what to do. I wasn't home when Fortune 
called, my feet had strayed afar; I fear 
that I am going bald, and I have got ca- 
tarrh. The wolf is howling at my door, 
I've naught to smoke or chew; but I shall 
write to Theodore — he'll tell me what to 
do. My Sunday suit is old and sere, I'm 
wearing last year's lids; my aunt is coming 
for a year, to visit, with her kids. They 
will not trust me at the store, and I am 
feeling blue, so I shall write to Theodore — 
he'll tell me what to do. When we are 
weary and distraught, from worldly strife 
and care, and we're denied the balm we. 
sought, and given black despair, ah, then, 
my friends, there is one chore devolves on 
me and you ; we'll simply write to Theo- 
dore — he'll tell us what to do. 



The 

Universal 

Help 



hJ^ 



The 
Conqueror 



Walt Mason 



WHO is this man of stately mien, 
who gains applause where'er he 
wends, who makes a hit in every 
scene, who has all people for his friends? 
The rich and poor, the high and low, behold 
his coming with glad smiles, the women say 
he is a jo, the merchant princes lift their 
tiles. He is no soldier, who in vain a mil- 
lion quarts of blood has shed; he has not 
cluttered up the plain with ricks and wind- 
rows of his dead. He is no statesman who 
has held a senate breathless while he spieled, 
and he has never whooped and yelled 
throughout the broad Chautauqua field. 
He is no author, who has made a book with 
fire in every line, that made Gene Stratton 
Porter fade, and H. Bell Wright take in his 
sign. Who is this man of lordly air, whom 
all the people thus applaud, and greet with 
fervor everywhere, whenever he may walk 
abroad? Why does he cut such scads of 
ice? What has he done that is sublime? 
He is the man who has the price — the man 
who pays his bills on time. 



[38] 



Walt Mason 



IN MY YOUTH I knew an aleck who 
was most exceeding smart, and his flip- 
pant way of talking often broke the 
hearer's heart. He was working for a gro- 
cer in a little corner store, taking down the 
wooden shutters, sweeping up the greasy 
floor, and he always answered pertly, and 
he had a sassy eye, and the people often 
asked him if he wouldn't kindly die. Oh, 
the festive years skedaddled, and the chil- 
dren of that day, now are bent beneath life's 
burdens, and their hair is turning gray; and 
the flippant one is toiling in the same old 
corner store, taking down the ancient shut- 
ters, sweeping up the greasy floor. In the 
same old sleepy village lived a springald 
so polite that to hear him answer questions 
was a genuine delight; he was working in a 
foundry where they dealt in eggs and cheese, 
and the work was hard and tiresome, but he 
always tried to please. And today he's boss 
of thousands, and his salary's sky high — 
and his manner's just as pleasant as it was 
in days gone by. It's an idle, trifling story, 
and you doubtless think it flat, but its moral 
might be pasted with some profit in your 
hat. 



Politeness 



[39] 



Progressive 
Doctoring 



I 



TOOK some dope, to make my head 
quit aching; it did the trick, but set 
my stomach wrong; and that old or- 
gan, all the bylaws breaking, just raised 
high jinks, and bucked the whole day long. 
I took some dope to get my stomach work- 
ing as in the days when it had fair renown; 
the dope did that, but set my muscles jerk- 
ing, until it took three men to hold me 
down. I took some dope to make my mus- 
cles steady; they soon calmed down, and 
started cutting hay; but then my liver acted 
up, already, and threw a fit, and spoiled my 
happy day. I took some dope to quell my 
liver's riot — some bitter stuff, disguised 
with cherry jam; no sooner was that liver 
lulled to quiet, than shooting pains whizzed 
through my diaphragm. I took some dope 
— but why prolong the anguish? I'm tak- 
ing dope, for this disease and that; there's 
something new each day to make me lan- 
guish, one day a boil, the next an aching 
slat. Pursuing health, all kinds of pills I 
swallow, the more I take, the more I have 
to buy; each pill demands another pill to 
follow — hand me the bitters, for I'm getting 
dry. 



[40] 



Walt Mason 



METHUSELAH, that grand old gent, 
saw centuries pass by; the genera- 
tions came and went, and he refused 
to die. No doubt among the ancient ranks 
the faddists drew their breath, and he was 
told by health board cranks just how to 
sidestep death. I seem to see them at his 
side, and hear them give advice. "Eat pre- 
digested hay," they cried, "that has been 
kept on ice. Sleep out of doors, in rain or 
gale, or you'll be on the blink; boil all the 
air that you inhale, and fry the things you 
drink. Eat less than half of what you wish, 
put sawdust in your bread; if you are fond 
of beef or fish, eat liverwurst instead." 
The faddists sprung their spiels and died; 
Methuselah shed tears, but would not take 
them as a guide — and lived nine hundred 
years. His voice across the distance calls a 
cheering word to me : "I ate ice cream and 
codfish balls, and was from sickness free. 
I filled myself with scrambled eggs, and 
steaks from slaughtered steers, and pranced 
around on active legs for near a thousand 



years. 



Methuselah 



[41] 



Unappreci- 
ated 



[42] 



Walt Mason 



THE young man labors hard at home, 
and writes a story or a pome, and, 
hoping to receive long green, he 
sends it to a magazine, or maybe to some 
daily sheet, which wants hot stuff that's 
keen and sweet. Then back it comes, by 
early mail, and how that writer makes his 
wail! The editors are all combined to bar 
that great and fertile mind! Or else they 
didn't read his stufif, but calmly set it down 
as guff, and shipped it back with his own 
stamps — what wonder tears are in his 
lamps? I used to talk that way myself, 
when viewing bundles on the shelf of tales 
and other gems of thought, which editors 
returned as rot. But, friend, the editors 
were right! The editors are mostly white, 
and if they see in man or dame a symptom 
of the genius flame, they do not douse the 
glowing spark with bitter sneer or cold re- 
mark, but try to fan it to a blaze, and nour- 
ish it with smile and praise. (These meta- 
phors, of course, are mixed, but when I've 
time I'll have them fixed.) The editors, 
all o'er this sphere, are looking, looking, 
year by year, to find the writers who can 
write, and finding one brings keen delight. 
So, if you cannot sell your junk, it is because 
the junk is punk. 



Walt Mason 



IT'S ALL very well to be nursing a 
grouch, when everything travels awry, 
and you haven't the pieces-of-eight in 
your pouch to pay for a cranberry pie; it's 
all very well to use language galore, and 
cover your whiskers with foam; you may 
prance around town with a head that is sore 
— but it's beastly to carry it home! You 
may be discouraged and worn by the strife; 
then make all your kicks on the street, for 
the man who will wear out his grouch on 
his wife, isn't fit for a cannibal's meat; if 
troubles and worries are beating you down, 
and bringing gray hairs to your dome, 'twill 
do in the office to carry a frown, but it's 
ghoulish to carry it home! The Lord, who 
made sparrows and Katy H. Dids, loves the 
man who is stalwart and brave, who cheerily 
goes to his wife and his kids, though his 
hopes may be fit for the grave; but the Lord 
has no use for the twenty-cent skate, whose 
courage is weak as the foam; who piles up 
his sorrows, and shoulders the weight, and 
carefully carries it home! 



The 
Grouch 



[43] 



The Hand 
Out 



[44] 



Walt Mas on 



THE most of us are working hard to 
stock the cupboard shelves, to pur- 
chase coal and lime and lard, to 
clothe and feed ourselves. We plug along 
the best we can, and always strive to keep a 
quarter for the fellow-man who has no 
place to sleep. The boys are always need- 
ing shoes, the girls for dresses call, and so 
we strain our weary thews, to raise the 
wherewithal. Down to our tasks we're al- 
ways bent, to meet each pressing need, and 
have a quarter for the gent who has no place 
to feed. We turn no beggar from the door, 
however hard we're pressed; we think, 
"Ere many years are o'er, like him we may 
be dressed ; like him we may be unemployed, 
and look as tough as he, and have a dull and 
aching void where fodder ought to be. 
Like him we may be glad to sleep in some 
abandoned well ; the cost of living is so steep 
who can our fate foretell? And when we 
for a handout plead, for hungry kids and 
f rau, may people help us in our need, as we 
help others now." 



Walt Mason 



WE'RE ALWAYS glad when he 
drops in — the pilgrim with the 
cheerful grin, who won't admit 
that grief and sin, are in possession; there 
are so many here below, who coax their 
briny tears to flow, and talk forevermore 
of woe, with no digression! The man who 
takes the cheerful view has friends to burn, 
and then a few; they like to hear his glad 
halloo, and loud ki-yoodle; they like to 
hear him blithely swear that things are 
right side up with care; they like to hear 
upon the air, his cock-a-doodle. The Long 
Felt Want he amply fills; he is a tonic for 
the ills that can't be reached with liver pills, 
or porous plasters; he helps to make the 
desert bloom; he plants the grouches in the 
tomb ; he's here to dissipate the gloom of 
life's disasters! 



The 
Optimist 



[45] 



Good Credit 



[46] 



Walt Mason 



THE finest thing a man can have is 
credit at the store; it is a balsam and 
a salve for every mortal sore. The 
customer who pays his debts when due, has 
shining fame; "he is the best of all good 
bets," the merchants all exclaim. And 
when misfortune dogs his heels, as it will 
visit men, and he is shy of plunks and 
wheels, of kopecks, dough and yen, the mer- 
chants say, "Buy what you will, and we will 
gladly wait, till you are fixed to pay the 
bill — we know that you are straight." The 
man who doesn't promptly pay the mer- 
chants what he owes, on the appointed set- 
tling day, all kinds of trouble knows. And 
when misfortune takes his trail, and hands 
him sundry knocks, and he is shy of dust 
and kale, of rhino, scads and rocks, the mer- 
chants say, "We cannot sell to gents like you 
on time, for when you're prospering quite 
well, you won't cough up a dime." Poor 
credit all your virtues queers, and gives a 
punk renown, and, though you live a hun- 
dred years, you'll never live it down. 



LITTLE DROPS of water poured into 
the milk, give the milkman's daugh- 
ters lovely gowns of silk. Little grains 
of sugar, mingled with the sand, make the 
grocer's assets swell to beat the band. Lit- 
tle bowls of custard, humble though they 
seem, help enrich the fellow selling pure 
ice cream. Little rocks and boulders, little 
chunks of slate, make the coal man's for- 
tune something fierce and great. Little 
ads, well written, printed nice and neat, 
give the joyful merchants homes on Easy 
Street. 



Little 
Things 



[47] 



Selfishness 



[48] 



Walt Mason 



JIM KICKSHAW has a touring car, 
in which he journeys near and far. 
There's room for seven in the same, and 
Jim might bring to many a dame who sel- 
dom has a chance to ride, pure happiness 
ten cubits wide. But Jim would rather 
ride alone, than take some poor old gent or 
crone. He'd take a banker or some skate 
who's made a pile in real estate; he'd load 
his car with damsels fair, and still insist 
there's room to spare. He'd gladly take a 
joyous crew, to whom such rides are noth- 
ing new. But there are men with spavined 
limbs, and poor old dames with worn-out 
glims; and crippled kids who sit and sigh, 
as gorgeous cars go whizzing by; and moth- 
ers, tired until their hearts just yearn for 
rides in choo-choo carts; and maiden aunts 
who'd trade their hair for three long breaths 
of country air. But these will never ride 
with Jim; they're poor, and don't appeal to 
him; the men don't wear their whiskers 
straight, the women's hats are out of date, 
the kids have seedy pinafores, from rolling 
round on unwashed floors. There's nothing 
in it, anyway; you haul the poor for half a 
day, and all you get for it is thanks; they 
have no assets in the banks. 



I 



Walt Mason 



THE old-fashioned virtues are not out 
of date; they'll never relapse to aban- 
doned estate. The records will show 
you that honesty pays, as much as it did in 
the halcyon days. And industry brings 
reputation and scads, the same as it did in 
the times of our dads. Sobriety helps us to 
lay up a wad, the larder to fill when the 
wolf is abroad. The silver-tongued speak- 
ers are jaunting around, and filling the air 
with a riot of sound, instructing the people 
just how they should vote, if they would be 
sure of retaining their goat; they're talking 
of creeds and of isms and things, and noth- 
ing of value the spell-binder brings. The 
world would be better if speakers would 
boom the old-fashioned virtues, and keep 
them in bloom, and say to the people, "Don't 
worry, don't fret, be honest and sober and 
keep out of debt." Oh, that is the counsel 
the plain people need; it's better than plati- 
tudes going to seed. The old-fashioned 
virtues much sustenance give; when they 
are adhered to, they teach us to live; and 
when we are ready to murmur goodby, they 
show us how sportsmanlike delegates die. 



The Old 
Virtues 



[49] 



Eating Too 
Much 



[50] 



Walt Mason 



1EAT too much, the doctor tells me; 
with arguments like this he quells me, 
when I inform him that his potions, 
of which I've swallowed endless oceans, 
don't cure my shingles, mumps or tetter, or 
make me feel the least bit better. "There'd 
be less sickness, grief and wailing, there'd 
be less suffering and ailing," j;he doc says, 
pausing in his carving, "if men would leave 
the table starving. Oh, let your meals be 
slim and meager; quit eating while you still 
are eager for more roast beef and spuds and 
gravy, and beans — the kidney kind or navy. 
Oh, leave the table while you're hollow, 
and while you still desire to swallow the bill 
of fare from A to Izzard, from soup right 
down to chicken gizzard. Then you'll be 
cured of your diseases, as laundered dog re- 
lieved of fleas is." Thus do the wise and 
learned physicians attack the modern-day 
conditions. We cure ourselves, by means 
distressing, and pay the doctor for his guess- 
ing. 



Walt Mason 



JIM JIMPSON stutters when he talks; 
his tongue or else his larynx balks; it 
takes a long and painful while for him 
to cross a verbal stile; his face goes through 
contortions weird, and froth is blown all 
o'er his beard. And yet Jim Jimpson 
doesn't mind ; he seems to think that he will 
find spellbinding wreaths within his reach 
— he's always glad to make a speech. Hob 
Hoskin's education's bad; he sidestepped 
school when but a lad, and now he keeps the 
language bent; he says, "I seen," and "I 
have went." When he orates, poor Gram- 
mar groans, and has an ache in all its bones, 
and cultured people rend their hair, and 
beat their breasts and weep and swear. Yet 
Hoskin thinks he is a peach at reeling off a 
witty speech. It seems as though all misfit 
gents, who cannot talk for thirteen cents, 
who torture people when they spiel, and 
make of language an ordeal, are sure they 
wear, with graceful ease, the mantle of 
Demosthenes. 



The Speech 
Makers 



[SI] 



A Few 
Remarks 



[52] 



Walt Mason 



1 GAILY sought the picnic ground, 
where children sported in the shade; 
with them I frolicked round and round, 
and drank with them red lemonade; and 
life seemed very full and sweet, as joyous 
as the song of larks, until a guy got on his 
feet, and said he'd make a few remarks. 
I journeyed to the county fair, to view the 
products of the farm; I marveled at the 
pumpkins there, and carrots longer than 
your arm; and happiness was over all, there 
was no sign of care that carks, until a man, 
with lots of gall, got up to make a few re- 
marks. Oh, I was born for joy and glee, 
to sing as blithely as the birds! My life, 
that should so sunny be, is darkened by a 
cloud of words; and when my prospects 
seem most fair, and trouble for its bourne 
embarks, some Windy Jim is always there, 
to rise and make a few remarks. 



Walt Mason 



I SING in the gloaming a dirge that is 
weird, while sparrows are combing 
the chaff from my beard. The theme 
of my ditty is tinhorn and snide — I'm roast- 
ing the city wherein I abide. Because I 
would slumber while others sawed wood, I 
am a back number, I haven't made good. 
An object of pity, I stand by the pump, and 
swear that the city has gone to the dump. 
"It's dead and decaying, a man has no 
show," I always am saying, as sadly I go, to 
scout for a handout from some kitchen 
wench; for I am a fanned-out — I'm back on 
the bench. But here in this city, which sees 
my distress, the chaps who are gritty have 
made a success. They say it's a daisy, a 
town full of vim, but men who are lazy can't 
get in the swim. Life's trodden me under 
until I am lame, and sometimes I wonder if 
I am to blame. If fellows less witty, less 
gifted than I, can thrive in this city, and 
fatten on pie, then why am I busted and 
down at the heel, and asking disgusted hired 
girls for a meal? The answer has terror 
and awe in my sight — that I am the error; 
the town is all right I 



Your Own 
Town 



[53] 




"/ to stuing the shining axe, you to take a 
feiv snvift nvhacks. 



Walt Mason 



CHARLES THE FIRST, with stately 
walk, made the journey to the block. 
As he paced the street along, silence 
fell upon the throng; from that throng 
there burst a sigh, for a king was come to 
die! Charles upon the scafifold stood, in 
his veins no craven blood; calm, serene, he 
viewed the crowd, while the headsman said, 
aloud: "Cheer up, Charlie! Smile and 
sing! Death's a most delightful thing! I 
will cure your hacking cough, when I chop 
your headpiece ofif ! Headache, toothache — 
they're a bore! You will never have them 
more! Cheer up, Charlie, dance and yell! 
Here's the axe, and all is well! I, though 
but a humble dub, represent the Sunshine 
Club, and our motto is worth while: 'Do 
Not Worry — Sing and Smile!' Therefore 
let us both be gay, as we do our stunt to- 
day; I to swing the shining axe, you to take 
a few swift whacks. Lumpty-doodle, lump- 
ty-ding, do not worry, smile and sing!" 



A Glance 
at History 



[5S] 



Longfellow 



[56] 



Walt Mason 



SINGER of the kindly song, minstrel 
of the gentle lay, when the night is 
dark and long, and beset with thorns 
the way — in the poignant hour of pain, in 
this weary worldly war, there is comfort in 
thy strain, courage in "Excelsior." When 
the city bends us down, with its weight of 
bricks and tiles, lead us, poet, from the 
town, to the fragrant forest aisles, where 
the hemlocks ever moan, like old Druids 
clad in green, as they sighed, when all 
alone, wandered sad Evangeline. Writer 
of the cleanly page, teacher of the golden 
truth; still I love thee in my age, as I 
loved thee in my youth. In some breasts 
a fiercer fire flamed, than ever thou hast 
known; but no mortal minstrel's lyre ever 
gave a purer tone. Singer of the kindly 
song, minstrel of the gentle lay, time is 
swift and art is long, and thy fame will 
last alway. 



Walt Mason 



iiXXTHAT IS Home Without a 
YY Mother?" There s the motto on 
the wall, hanging in a place ob- 
trusive, where it may be seen by all; and 
the question's never answered — we can't 
know what home would be, if its gentle 
guardian angel in her place no more we'd 
see. Mother washes all the dishes and she's 
sweeping up the floors, while the girls are 
in the parlor doing Paderewski chores; 
mother's breaking up some kindling at the 
woodpile by the gate, while the boys are 
in the garden with their shovels, digging 
bait; mother's on her knees a-scrubbing, 
where the careless footprints are, while the 
father sits in comfort, toiling at a bad cigar. 
Mother sits with weary fingers, and with 
bent and aching head, sewing, darning, for 
the children while they're all asleep in bed; 
mother's up before the sunrise, up to labor 
and to moil, thinking ever of the others, in 
the weary round of toil. What is home 
without a mother? That we'll never realize 
till the light of life has faded from the kind 
and patient eyes; when the implements of 
labor fall unheeded from her hand, and the 
loving voice is silent — then, at last, we'll 
understand. 



Home and 

Mother 



[57] 



In 

Politics 



[58] 



Walt Mason 



IS DAYS were joyous and serene, his 
life was pure, his record clean ; folks 
named their children after him, and 




he was in the social swim; ambitious lads 
would say: "I plan to be just such a 
worthy man!" But in the fullness of his 
years, the tempter whispered in his ears, 
and begged that he would make the race 
for county judge, or some such place. And 
so he yielded to his fate, and came forth 
as a candidate. The night before election 
day they found him lying, cold and gray, 
the deadest man in all the land, this mes- 
sage in his icy hand: "The papers that op- 
posed my race have brought me into deep 
disgrace; I find that I'm a fiend unloosed; 
I robbed a widow's chicken roost, and stole 
an orphan's Easter egg, and swiped a sol- 
dier's wooden leg.] I bilked a heathen of 
his joss, and later kidnapped Charlie Ross;' 
T learn, with something like alarm, that I 
designed the Gunness farm, and also, with 
excessive grief, that Black Hand cohorts 
call me chief./ I thought myself a decent 
man, whose record all the world might 
scan; but now, alas, too late! I see that all 
the depths of infamy have soiled me with 
their reeking shame, and so it's time to quit 
the game." 



Walt Mason 



THE GREATEST gift the gods be- 
stowed on mortal was his dome of 
thought; it sometimes seems a useless 
load, when one is tired, and worn and hot; 
it sometimes seems a trifling thing, less use- 
ful than one's lungs or slats; a mere ex- 
cuse, it seems, to bring us duns from men 
who deal in hats. Some men appreciate 
their heads, and use them wisely every day, 
and every passing minute sheds new 
splendor on their upward way; while some 
regard their heads as junk, mere idle knobs 
upon their necks; such men are nearly al- 
ways sunk in failure, and are gloomy 
wrecks. I know a clerk who's served his 
time in one old store for twenty-years; he's 
marked his fellows climb, and climb — and 
marked with jealousy and tears; he's 
labored there since he was young; he'll la- 
bor there till he is dead; he never rose -a 
single rung, because he never used his head. 
I know a poorhouse in the vale, where fifty- 
seven paupers stay; they paw the air and 
weep and wail, and cuss each other all the 
day; and there they'll loll while life en- 
dures, and there they'll die in pauper beds; 
their chances were as good as yours — but 
then they never used their heads. O human 
head! Majestic box I O wondrous can, 
from labels free! If man is craving fame 
or rocks, he'll ^et them if he uses thee! 



The 

Human 

Head 



[59] 



The 

Famous 

Four 



[60] 



Walt Mason 



JOHN AND PETER, and Robert and 
Paul, what in the world has become 
of them all? How are they stacking, 
and where are they gone — Paul and Robert 
and Peter and John? Paul was a poet, and 
labored and wrought over his harp, and he 
kept its strings hot; haunting and sad was 
his music, though sweet — bards can't be 
glad when they've nothing to eat. Peter 
made pictures and painted them well; 
'twasn't his fault that they never would sell ; 
'twasn't his fault that he took a brief ride 
out to the poorhouse, where later he died. 
Robert taught school till he died of old age ; 
hard were his labors and scanty his wage; 
we laid him to rest in a grave on the hill; 
the county was called on to settle the bill. 
John was a pitcher, whose curves were im- 
mense; he was the pet of the bleachers, and 
hence he was the owner of riches untold; 
diamonds and rubies and sapphires and 
gold. John and Peter and Robert and 
Paul! Through the long years we've kept 
cases on all! 



Walt Mason 



SHE WAS sweet and soft and clinging, 
and he always found her singing, when 
he came home from his labors as the 
night was closing in; she was languishing 
and slender, and her eyes were deep and 
tender, and he simply couldn't tell her that 
her coffee was a sin. Golden hair her head 
was crowning; she was fond of quoting 
Browning, and she knew a hundred legends 
of the olden, golden time; and her heart 
was full of yearning for the Rosicrucian 
learning, and he simply couldn't tell her 
that the beefsteak was a crime. She was 
posted on Pendennis, and she knew the 
songs of Venice, and he listened to her 
prattle with an effort to look pleased; and 
she liked the wit of Weller — and he simply 
couldn't tell her that the eggs he had for 
breakfast had been laid by hens diseased. 
So she filled his home with beauty, and she 
did her wifely duty, did it as she under- 
stood it, and her conscience didn't hurt, 
when dyspepsia boldly sought him, and the 
sexton came and got him, and his tortured 
frame was buried 'neath a wagon-load of 
dirt. O, those marriageable misses, think- 
ing life all love and kisses, mist and moon- 
shine, glint and glamour, Stardust borrowed 
from the skies! Man's a gross and sordid 
lummix — men are largely made of stom- 
achs, and the songs of all the sirens will not 
take the place of pies! 



Little 
Sunbeam 



[6i] 



A Rainy 
Night 



Walt Mason 



I HEAR the plashing of the rain upon 
the roof, upon the pane, it murmurs 
at the door; it patters forth a futile 
boast; it whispers like a timid ghost; it 
streams upon the floor. And as I sit me 
here alone, and listen to its monotone, 
strange fancies come and go ; I seem to see, 
distinct and plain dim faces drawn upon 
the pane, of friends I used to know. Soft 
voices whisper in the rain, and friends I 
ne'er shall see again, are crying bitterly; the 
raindrops seem to be their tears, and o'er 
the misty void of years, they're calling, call- 
ing me. O shadows from a starless shore, 
begone, and torture me no more, and leave 
me here alone! I fear the voices in the 
rain, the voices vibrant with their pain — 
I fear the spectres that complain, in weary 
monotone! But still they chide me at the 
door, and whisper there for evermore, and 
murmur in their woe; I hear them in the 
tempest's swell, I hear them sigh, I hear 
them yell: "Where is that old green 
umberell, you swiped two years ago?" 



[62] 



Walt Mason 



BRIGHT-HUED and beautiful, it 
floats upon the summer air; and every 
thread of it denotes the love that's 
woven there; the love of veterans whose 
tread has sounded on the fields of red; and 
women old, who mourn their dead, but 
mourn without despair. Bright-hued and 
beautiful, it courts caresses of the breeze; 
and, straining at its staff it sports, in flaunt- 
ing ecstasies; and other flags, that once were 
gay, long, long ago were laid away, and 
many men, whose heads are gray, are think- 
ing now of these. Serene and beautiful it 
waves, the flag our fathers knew; in Free- 
dom's sunny air it laves, and gains a brighter 
hue; and may it still the symbol be of all 
that makes a nation free; still may we 
cherish Liberty, and to our God be true. 



The 
Flag 



[63] 



Little 
Girl 



[64] 



Walt Mason 



LITTLE GIRL, so glad and jolly, 
playing with your home-made dolly, 
built of rags and straw, fill the sunny 
air with laughter, heedless of the sorrow 
after — that is childhood's law! Let no sad 
and sordid vision cheat you of the joy 
Elysian that to youth belongs; let no proph- 
ecy of sorrow scheduled for a sad tomor- 
row still your joyous songs! Soon enough 
will come the worry, and the labors, and the 
hurry, soon you'll cook and scrub ; soon with 
milliners and drapers you will fuss, and 
read long papers, at the Culture Club. 
Lithe your form, but soon you'll force it 
in a torture-chamber corset that will make 
you bawl ; and those little feet, that twinkle, 
you will squeeze, until they wrinkle, into 
shoes too small. And those sunny locks so 
tangled will be tortured and kedangled into 
waves and curls; and you'll buy complexion 
powder, and your bonnets will be louder 
than the other girl's. Little girl, with home- 
made dolly, cut out woe and melancholy, 
jump and sing and play! Fill the rippling 
air with laughter! Tears and corns will 
follow after! This is childhood's day! 



Walt Mason 



s 



HE IS a vain and foolish lass; she 
stands before her looking-glass, and 
fusses with her pins and rats, and 
tries on half a dozen hats, and fixes doodads 
in her hair, and tints her cheeks, already 
fair. And when she's fooled three hours 
away, and she appears, in glad array, she 
isn't half as nice and neat, she isn't half as 
slick and sweet as she appeared, four hours 
ago, when she was wearing calico. If she 
would take the time she fools away with 
paints and curling tools, and read some 
books, of prose or rhyme, she'd get some 
value for her time. She pads her head out- 
side with rats, machine made hair and 
monster hats; and gladness might with her 
abide, if she would pad her head inside. 
For beauty is a transient thing; the hurried 
years are on the wing; the dazzling maiden 
of today will soon be haggard, worn and 
gray; and in life's winter, when she sits be- 
side her lonely hearth and knits, it will not 
lessen her despair, to think of rats she used 
to wear. But if her mind is stored with 
gold from books the sages wrote of old, with 
ancient lore or modern song, the days will 
not seem drear and long; life's twilight will 
be calm and fair, and loneliness will not be 
there. 



BeryVs 
Boudoir 



[6s] 




'Honors do not count for much luith 
people underground " 



Walt Mason 



WHEN you are dead, my weary 
friend — and some day you must 
die — the crowds will stand along 
the curb to see the hearse go by; and at the 
church the folks will stand and raise a 
mournful din, and pile a lot of roses on the 
box that you are in. And people then will 
shake their heads and say it is a shame, that 
such a honeybird as you should have to 
quit the game; and when beneath the sod 
you rest in your mail order gown, you'll 
have a big fat monument that's sure to hold 
you down. But little will it all avail, for 
you'll be sleeping sound, and honors do not 
count for much with people underground. 
You'd rather have some kindness while you 
tread this vale of tears, than have your dust 
lamented o'er for fifty million years. 



Post- 

Morfem 

Honors 



[67] 



After 
A While 



Walt Mason 



THE mother, tired, with aching head, 
from sweeping floors and baking 
bread, called to her daughter: "Su- 
san, dear, I wish you'd help a little here." 
Fair Susan, in the parlor dim, was playing 
o'er a tender hymn; methinks it was "The 
Maiden's Prayer" — a melody beyond com- 
pare. She cried, while playing on, in style: 
"I'll help you in a little while." Her 
lover blew in unawares — a fine young man 
with princely airs. His heart was free 
from sordid stains; his head was full of 
high-class brains; most any girl would give 
her eyes to gather in so big a prize. He 
heard the mother's weary cry; he heard the 
damsel's flip reply. His bosom swelled 
with noble ire! His tawny eyes flashed 
streaks of fire! He cried: "Miss Susan 
Sarah Brown, it's up to me to turn you 
down! While groundhogs live and comets 
shine, you'll be no blushing bride of mine! 
The healthy girl who doesn't jump, and on 
her system get a hump, when mother calls, 
I do not want; so get thee hence! Aroint! 
Avaunt! I'll hunt me up a damsel fair who 
passes up 'The Maiden's Prayer' when she 
has got a chance to chase the troubles from 
her mother's face!" 



[68] 



Walt Mason 



I RUN a hash bazaar, just up the street; 
there all my boarders are yelling for 
meat; boarders carniverous, boarders 
herbiverous; Allah deliver us! just watch 
them eat! Boarders are ravenous, all the 
world o'er; "feed till you spavin us," thus 
they implore; boarders are gluttonous, 
roastbeef and muttonous; "come and un- 
button us, so we'll eat more!" Little they 
pay me for chicken and rice; yet they way- 
lay me for dainties of price; "bring us 
canary birds" — these are their very words, 
bawling like hairy Kurds — "bring them on 
ice!" I give them tea and toast, jelly and 
jam, some kind of stew or roast, codfish or 
ham; their words are Chaucerous: "Dame 
Cup-and-Saucerous, bring us rhinoceros, 
boiled with a yam!" I run a boarding 
booth, as I have said; there Age and Smil- 
ing Youth, raise the Old Ned; maybe the 
clamoring, knocking and hammering bunch 
will be stammering, when I am dead! 



The 
Landlady 



[69] 



Knowledge 
By Mail 



[70] 



Walt Mason 



WHEN I was young and fresh and 
ruddy, and full of snap and vim, 
my parents used to make me study 
until my head would swim. I sat upon the 
schoolhouse bleachers, with pencil, book 
and slate, while sundry bald and weary 
teachers drilled knowledge through my 
pate. For some quick method I was yearn- 
ing, some easy path to tread; "there is no 
royal road to learning," the bald old teach- 
ers said; "stick closely to the printed pages, 
all idleness eschew, and then, perhaps, in 
future ages, you'll know a thing or two." 
And when I left the school and college, to 
climb life's toilsome hill, I found my little 
store of knowledge would barely fill the 
bill. But nowadays the world moves 
quicker than in the long ago; old-fashioned 
methods make us snicker, they were so 
crude and slow. By sending seven wooden 
dollars to Messrs. Freaks and Freaks, they'll 
make our children finished scholars, and do 
it in three weeks. So let us close the schools 
and leave 'em to ruin and decay, and take 
the books and maps and heave 'em a mil- 
lion miles away; for now the kids take eru- 
dition in three-grain capsule form; the 
teacher loses the position that he so long 
kept warm. 



Walt Mason 



SAMANTHA Arabella Luke has gone 
abroad and caught a duke — a noble- 
man of gilded ease, who has a standard 
blood disease. She'll build again his state- 
ly halls, and pay for papering the walls; 
she'll straighten up his park and grounds, 
and buy him nags to ride to hounds; she'll 
tear the checks from out her book, to pay 
the butler and the cook, whose wages have 
been in arrears for maybe twenty-seven 
years. In fifty ways she'll spend the scads, 
the good old rocks that were her dad's; and 
all the nobles in the land will greet her with 
the arctic hand, and snub her in her hus- 
band's lair, and pass her up with stony stare. 
And ere a year has run its course, the duke 
will hustle for divorce, and Arabella's tears 
will drop upon the marble floors, kerflop! 
Samantha's cousin, Mary Ann, has hooked 
up with the plumber man, a gent of in- 
dustry and peace, whose face is often black 
with grease. They dwell together in a cot 
surrounded by a garden plot, and there she 
raises beans and tripe, while he is fixing 
valve and pipe. He takes his money, like a 
man, and hands it o'er to Mary Ann, and 
she is salting down his wage where it will 
help them in old age. O reader, who has 
made a fluke? Samantha with her pallid 
duke, or fat and sassy Mary Ann, who 
gathered in the plumber man? 



Duke and 
Plumber 



[71] 



Human 
Hajids 



[72] 



Walt Mason 



THERE'S the man whose hand is 
clammy as a fish that lately died, and 
to grasp it sends a shudder percolat- 
ing through your hide, and you feel its cold 
impression in your muscles and your glands, 
and you wish he'd wear an oven on his 
blamed antarctic hands. There's the man 
with hands so horny that they feel like 
chunks of slate, and when he is shaking 
with you, you can feel them grind and grate ; 
and he nearly breaks your fingers, and you 
mutter through your hat: "I would run 
them through a smelter if my hands were 
hard as that!" There's the man whose 
hands are always pawing, pawing while he 
talks; they are fussing with your whiskers, 
they are reaching for your socks; they are 
patting on your bosom, they are clawing on 
your arm, and you'd like to meet their own- 
er on the Mrs. Gunness farm. There's the 
man whose hands are always sliding down 
into his jeans, to relieve some broken pil- 
grims of their miseries and pains; and such 
hands, that in their giving, never falter, 
never tire, in the golden time a-coming will 
be twanging at a lyre! 



Walt Mason 



UPON THE joyous New Year's day I 
threw my briar pipe away. I said, 
with conscious rectitude: "The 
smoking habit's base and lewd; it taints the 
breath and soils the teeth, and often stains 
the chin beneath; the smoker's tongue is 
badly seared, and he has clinkers in his 
beard; of nicotine he is so full no self-re- 
specting cannibuU would eat him raw, well 
done or rare; and e'en his neckties and his 
hair, his hat, his breath, and trouserloons, 
suggest plug-cut and cuspitoons. And so I 
throw my pipe away, upon this gladsome 
New Year's day; my friends no more will 
have to choke and wheeze in my tobacco 
smoke." Since then the days drag slowly 
on; it seems as though ten years have gone; 
I walk the floor the long night through, 
and, jealous, watch the kitchen flue — for it 
can smoke and hold carouse, and not bust 
forty-seven vows; the cookstove makes my 
vitals gripe, for it can use its trusty pipe. 
Thus far I've kept the vow I swore, but do 
not tempt me any more; don't talk of cab- 
bage on the place, or flaunt alfalfa in my 
face I 



The Lost 
Pipe 



[73] 



Thanks- 
giving 



[74] 



Walt Mason 



THIS ONE DAY let us forget all the 
little things that fret, all the little 
griefs and cares which are bringing 
us gray hairs; let's forget the evil thought, 
and the ill that others wrought; thinking 
only of the hand that has led us through a 
land smiling with a richer store than fair 
Canaan knew of yore. Let's forget to jeer 
and rail at the men who fight and fail; let's 
forget to criticise motes within our neigh- 
bors' eyes; thinking only of the hand that 
has led us through a land where the toiler 
gets reward; where no grasping overlord 
harries men with lash or chain, robbing 
them of brawn and brain. Let's forget 
malicious things; better is the heart that 
sings than the one that harbors hate, which 
is aye a killing weight. Let's forget the 
scowling brow; it's the time for gladness 
now! It's the time for well-stuffed birds, 
kindly smiles and cheerful words; it's a 
time to try to rise somewhat nearer to the 
skies, thinking only of a hand that will 
lead us to a land in the distances above, 
where the countersign is love. 



Walt Mason 



AT THAT HOUR supremely quiet, 
when the dusk and darkness blend, 
and the sordid strife and riot of the 
day are at an end; when the bawling and 
the screaming of the mart have died away, 
then I like to lie a-dreaming of my castles 
in Cathay. I would roam in flowery spaces 
watered by the fabled streams, 1 would 
travel starry spaces on the winged feet of 
dreams; I would float across the ages to a 
more heroic time, when inspired were all 
ages, and the warriors sublime. At that 
hour supremely pleasing, dreams are all 
knocked galley west, by the phonograph 
that's wheezing: "Birdie, Dear, I Love 
You Best." 



Twilight 
Reveries 



[75] 



King 
and Kid 



[76] 



Walt Mason 



THE KING sat up on his jeweled 
throne, and he heaved a sigh that was 
like a groan, for his crown was hard, 
and it bruised his head, and his scepter 
weighed like a pig of lead; the ladies 
smirked as they came to beg; the knights 
were pulling the royal leg. The king ex- 
claimed: "If I had my wish, I would cut 
this out, and I'd go and fish. For what is 
pomp to a weary soul that yearns and yearns 
for the fishing hole; the throne's a bore and 
the crown a gawd, and I'd swap the lot for 
a bamboo rod, and a can of worms and a 
piece of string — but there's no such luck for 
a poor old king!" And a boy who passed 
by the palace high, to fish for trout in the 
streamlet nigh, looked up in awe at the 
massive walls, and caught a glimpse of the 
marble halls, and he said to himself: "Oh, 
huUy chee! Wisht I was the king, and 
the king was me! To reign all day with 
your crown on straight is a whole lot bet- 
ter'n diggin' bait, and fishin' round when 
the fish won't bite, and gettin' licked for 
your luck at night!" 



Walt Mason 



A HUNDRED years ago and more, 
men wrung their hands, and walked 
the floor, and worried over this or 
that, and thought their cares would squash 
them flat. Where are those worried beings 
now? The bearded goat and festive cow 
eat grass above their mouldered bones, and 
jay birds call, in strident tones. And where 
the ills they worried o'er? Forgotten all, 
for ever more. Gone all the sorrow and 
the woe, that lived a hundred years ago! 
The grief that makes you scream today, 
like other griefs, will pass away; and when 
you've cashed your little string, and jay 
birds o'er your bosom sing, the stranger 
pausing there to view the marble works that 
cover you, will think upon the uselessness 
of human worry and distress. So let the 
worry business slide; live while you live, 
and when you've died, the folks will say, 
around your bier: "He made a hit while 
he was here!" 



Useless 
Griefs 



l77l 



The Little 
GreeJt 
Tents 



[78] 



Walt Mason 



THE LITTLE green tents where the 
soldiers sleep, and the sunbeams play 
and the women weep, are covered 
with flowers today; and between the tents 
walk the weary few, who were young and 
stalwart in 'sixty-two, when they went to the 
war away. The little green tents are built 
of sod, and they are not long, and they are 
not broad, but the soldiers have lots of 
room; and the sod is part of the land they 
saved, when the flag of the enemy darkly 
waved, the symbol of dole and doom. The 
little green tent is a thing divine; the little 
green tent is a country's shrine, where 
patriots kneel and pray; and the brave men 
left, so old, so few, were young and stal- 
wart in 'sixty-two, when they went to the 
war away! 



Walt Mason 



HE USED to take a flowing bowl per- 
haps three times a day; he needed it 
to brace his nerves, or drive the 
blues away, but as for chaps who drank 
too much, they simply made him tired; "a 
drink," he said, "when feeling tough, is 
much to be desired; some men will never 
quit the game while they can raise a bone, 
but I can drink the old red booze, or let 
the stufif alone." He toddled on the down- 
ward path, and seedy grew his clothes, and 
like a beacon in the night flamed forth his 
bulbous nose; he lived on slaw and sweitzer 
cheese, the free lunch brand of fruits, and 
when he sought his downy couch he always 
wore his boots; "some day I'll cut it out," 
he said; "my will is still my own, and I can 
hit the old red booze, or let the stuff alone." 
One night a prison surgeon sat by this poor 
pilgrim's side, and told him that his time 
had come to cross the great divide. "I've 
known you since you were a lad," the stern 
physician said, "and I have watched you as 
you tried to paint the whole world red, and 
if you wish, I'll have engraved upon your 
churchyard stone: 'He, dying, proved that 
he could let the old red booze alone.' " 



Letting It 
Alone 



[79] 



End of 
The Road 



[80] 



Walt Mason 



SOME DAY this heart will cease to 
beat; some day these worn and weary 
feet will tread the road no more ; some 
day this hand will drop the pen, and never 
never write again those rhymes which are 
a bore. And sometimes, when the stars 
swing low, and mystic breezes come and go, 
with music in their breath, I think of Des- 
tiny and Fate, and try to calmly contem- 
plate this bogie men call Death. Such 
thinking does not raise my hair; my cheer- 
ful heart declines to scare or thump against 
my vest; for Death, when all is said and 
done, is but the dusk, at set of sun, the in- 
terval of rest. But lines of sorrow mark my 
brow when I consider that my frau, when 
I have ceased to wink, will have to face a 
crowd of gents who're selling cheap tin 
monuments, and headstones made of zinc. 
And crayon portrait sharks will come, and 
make the house with language hum, and 
ply their deadly game; they will enlarge 
my photograph, attach a hand-made 
epitaph, and put it in a frame. They'll hang 
that horror on the wall, and then, when 
neighbors come to call, they'll view my 
crayon head, and wipe sad tears from either 
eye, and lean against the chairs, and cry: 
"How fortunate he's dead!" 



Walt Mason 



ONCE A fisherman was dying in his 
humble, lowly cot, and the pastor sat 
beside him saying things that hit the 
spot, so that all his futile terrors left the 
dying sinner's heart, and he said: "The 
journey's lonely, but I'm ready for the 
start. There is just one little matter that 
is fretting me," he sighed, "and perhaps I'd 
better tell it ere I cross the Great Divide. I 
have got a string of stories that I've told 
from day to day; stories of the fish I've cap- 
tured, and the ones that got away, and I fear 
that when I tell them they are apt to stretch 
a mile; and I wonder when I'm wafted to 
that land that's free from guile, if they'll 
let me tell my stories if I try to tell them 
straight, or will angels lose their tempers 
then, and chase me through the gate?" 
Then the pastor sat and pondered, for the 
question vexed him sore ; never such a weird 
conundrum had been sprung on him be- 
fore. Yet the courage of conviction moved 
him soon to a reply, and he wished to fill 
the fisher with fair visions of the sky : "You 
can doubtless tell fish stories," said the 
clergyman, aloud, "but I'd stretch them 
very little if old Jonah's in the crowd." 



The Dying 
Fisherman 



[8i] 



The 

Venerable 
Excuse 



Walt Mason 



Y 



[82] 



OU SAY your grandma's dead, my 
lad, and you, bowed down with woe, 
to see her laid beneath the mold be- 
lieve you ought to go; and so you ask a 
half day off, and you may have that same; 
alas, that grannies always die when there's 
a baseball game! Last spring, if I remem- 
ber right, three grandmas died for you, and 
you bewailed the passing, then, of souls so 
warm and true ; and then another grandma 
died — a tall and stately dame ; the day they 
buried her there was a fourteen-inning 
game. And when the balmy breeze of June 
among the willows sighed, another grand- 
ma closed her eyes and crossed the Great 
Divide; they laid her gently to her rest be- 
side the churchyard wall, the day we 
lammed the stuffing from the Rubes from 
Minnepaul. Go forth, my son, and mourn 
your dead, and shed the scalding tear, and 
lay a simple wreath upon your eighteenth 
grandma's bier; while you perform this 
solemn task I'll to the grandstand go, and 
watch our pennant-winning team make 
soupbones of the foe. 



Walt Mason 



THE OTHER night I took a walk, 
and called on Jinx, across the block. 
The home of Jinx was full of boys 
and girls and forty kinds of noise. Dad 
Jinx was good, and kind, and straight; he 
let the children go their gait; he never 
spoke a sentence cross, he never showed that 
he was boss, and so his home, as neighbors 
know, was like the Ringling wild beast 
show. We tried to talk about the crops; 
the children raised their fiendish yawps; 
they hunted up a Thomas cat, and placed 
it in my stovepipe hat; they jarred me with 
a carpet tack, and poured ice water down 
my back; my long coat tails they set afire, 
and this aroused my slumb'ring ire. I rose, 
majestic in my wrath, and through those 
children mowed a path, I smote them sore- 
ly, hip and thigh, and piled them in the 
woodshed nigh; I threw their father in the 
well, and fired his cottage, with a yell. 
Some rigid moralists, I hear, have said my 
course was too severe, but their rebukes 
can not affright — my conscience tells me I 
was right. 



The Smart 
Children 



[83] 




*A little restinfr in the shadoiu, a struggle to the height, a futile 
search for El Dorado, and then lue say good night." 



Walt Mason 



A LITTLE work, a little sweating, a 
few brief, flying years; a little joy, a 
little fretting, some smiles and then 
some tears; a little resting in the shadow, 
a struggle to the height, a futile search for 
El Dorado, and then we say Good Night. 
Some moiling in the strife and clangor, 
some years of doubt and debt, some words 
we spoke in foolish anger that we would 
fain forget; some cheery words we said un- 
thinking, that made a sad heart light; the 
banquet, with its feast and drinking — and 
then we say Good Night. Some question- 
ing of creeds and theories, and judgment of 
the dead, while God, who never sleeps or 
wearies, is watching overhead; some little 
laughing and some sighing, some sorrow, 
some delight; a little music for the dying, 
and then we say Good Night. 



The 
Journey 



[8s] 



Times 

Have 

Changed 



Walt Mason 



[86] 



THE MAIDEN lingered in her bower, 
within her father's stately tower — it 
was four hundred years ago — her 
lover came, o'er cliff and scar, and twanged 
the strings of his guitar, and sang his love 
songs, soft and low. He said her breath was 
like the breeze that wandered over flowery 
leas, her cheeks were lovely as the rose; her 
eyes were stars, from heaven torn, and she 
was guiltless of a corn upon her sweet 
angelic toes. For hours and hours his songs 
were sung, until a puncture spoiled a lung, 
and then of course he had to quit; but 
Arabella from her room would shoot a smile 
that lit the gloom, and gave him a connip- 
tion fit. Then homeward would the lover 
hie, as happy as an August fly upon a bald 
man's shining head; and Arabella's heart 
would swell with happiness too great to tell ; 
ah me, those good old times are dead! Just 
let a modern lover scheme to win the damsel 
of his dream by punching tunes from his 
guitar! In silver tones she'd jeer and scoff; 
she'd call to him: "Come off! come off! 
where is your blooming motor car? 



Walt Mason 



MY LITTLE DOG DOT is a sassy 
pup, and I scold him in savage 
tones, for he keeps the garden all 
littered up with feathers and rags and bones. 
He drags dead cats for a half a mile, and 
sometimes a long-dead hen; and when I 
have carted away the pile, he builds it all 
up again. He howls for hours at the beam- 
ing moon, and thinks it a Melba chore; and 
neighbors who list to his throbbing tune, 
rear up in the air and roar. And often I 
hand down this stern decree: "This critter 
will have to die." And he puts his paws on 
my old fat knee, and turns up a loving eye; 
and he wags his tail, and he seems to say: 
"You're almost too fat to walk, and your 
knees are sprung and your whiskers gray, 
and your picture would stop a clock; some 
other doggies might turn you down — some 
dogs that are proud and grand, but you are 
the best old boss in town ; I love you to beat 
the band!" And he bats his eye and he 
wags his tail, conveying: this kindly thought; 
and I'd rather live out my days in jail, than 
injure that derned dog Dot! 



My Little 
Dog 



[87] 



Silver 
Threads 



[88] 



Walt Mason 



SING A SONG of long ago, now the 
weary day is done, and the breeze is 
sighing low dirges for the vanished 
sun; sing a song of other days, ere our 
hearts were tired and old; sing the sweetest 
of old lays: "Silver Threads Among the 
Gold." We who feebly hold the track in 
the gloaming of life's day, love the songs 
that take us back to life's springtime, far 
away, when our hope had airy wing, and 
our hearts were strong and bold, and at eve 
we used to sing "Silver Threads Among the 
Gold." Then our hair no silver knew, and 
these eyes, that shrunken seem, were the 
brightest brown or blue, and old age was 
but a dream ; but the years have taken flight, 
and life's evening bells are tolled; so, my 
children, sing tonight, "Silver Threads 
Among the Gold." 



Walt Mason 



NOW THE LONG, long day is fad- 
ing, and the hush of dusk is here, and 
the stars begin parading, each one in 
its distant sphere; and the city's strident 
voices dwindle to a gentle hum, and the 
heart of man rejoices that the hour of rest 
has come. Thrown away is labor's fetter, 
when the day has reached its close; nothing 
in the world is better than a weary man's 
repose. Nothing in the world is sweeter 
than the sleep the toiler finds, while the 
ravening moskeeter fusses at the window 
blinds. Nothing 'neath the moon can wake 
him, short of cannon cracker's roar; if you'd 
rouse him you must shake him till you 
dump him on the floor. Idle people seek 
their couches, seek their beds to toss and 
weep, for a demon on them crouches, driv- 
ing from their eyes the sleep. And the 
weary hours they number, and they cry, in 
tones distraught: "For a little wad of slum- 
ber, I would give a house and lot!" When 
the long, long day is dying, and you watch 
the twinkling stars, knowing that you'll soon 
be lying, sleeping like a train of cars, be, 
then, thankful, without measure; be as 
thankful as you can; you have nailed as 
great a treasure as the gods have given 
man! 



Tired 

Mans 

Sleep 



[89] 



Tomorrow 



[90] 



Walt Mason 



^npoi 



OMORROW," said the languid man, 
''11 have my life insured, I guess; 
know it is the safest plan, to save 
my children from distress." And when the 
morrow came around, they placed him gent- 
ly in a box; at break of morning he was 
found as dead as Julius Caesar's ox. His 
widow now is scrubbing floors, and washing 
shirts, and splitting wood, and doing fifty 
other chores, that she may rear her wail- 
ing brood. "Tomorrow," said the careless 
jay, "I'll take an hour, and make my will ; 
and then if I should pass away, the wife 
and kids will know no ill." The morrow 
came, serene and nice, the weather mild, 
with signs of rain; the careless jay was 
placed on ice, embalming fluid in his brain. 
Alas, alas, poor careless jay! The lawyers 
got his pile of cash; his wife is toiling night 
and day, to keep the kids in clothes and hash. 
Tomorrow is the ambushed walk avoided by 
the circumspect. Tomorrow is the fatal 
rock on which a million ships are wrecked. 



Walt Mason 



NOW MY WEARY heart is break- 
ing, for my left hand tooth is ach- 
ing, with a harsh, persistent rumble 
that is keeping folks awake; hollowed out 
by long erosion, it, with spasm and explo- 
sion, seems resolved to show the public how 
a dog-gone tooth can ache. Now it's quiver- 
ing or quaking; now it's doing fancy ach- 
ing, then it shoots some Roman candles 
which go whizzing through my brain; now 
it does some lofty tumbling, then again it's 
merely grumbling; and anon it's showing 
samples of spring novelties in pain. All 
the time my woe increases; I have kicked a 
chair to pieces, but it didn't seem to soothe 
me or to bring my soul relief; I have 
stormed around the shanty till my wife and 
maiden auntie said they'd pull their freight 
and leave me full enjoyment of my grief. I 
have made myself so pleasant that I'm quar- 
antined at present, and the neighbors say 
they'll shoot me if I venture from my door; 
now a voice cries : "If thou'd wentest in the 
first place, to a dentist — " it is strange that 
inspiration never came to me before I 



Toothache 



[91] 



Auf Wie- 
dersehen 



Walt Mason 



''TJVAREWELL," I said,to the friend I 
ri loved, and my eyes were filled with 
-^ tears; "I know you'll come to my 
heart again, in a few brief, hurried years!" 
Ah, many come up the garden path, and 
knock at my cottage door, but the friend I 
loved when my heart was young, comes back 
to that heart no more. "Farewelll" I cried 
to the gentle bird, whose music had filled 
the dawn; "you fly away, but you'll sing 
again, when the winter's snows are gone." 
Ah, the bright birds sway on the apple- 
boughs, and sing as they sang before; but 
the bird I loved, with the golden voice, 
shall sing to my heart no more! "Fare- 
well!" I said to the Thomas Cat, I threw in 
the gurgling creek, all weighted down with 
a smoothing iron, and a hundredweight of 
brick. "You'll not come back, if I know 
myself, from the silent, sunless shore!" 
Then I journeyed home, and that blamed 
old cat was there by the kitchen door! 



[92] 



Walt Mason 



WHEN I CASH in, and this poor 
race is run, my chores performed, 
and all my errands done, I know 
that folks who mock my efforts here, will 
weeping bend above my lowly bier, and 
bring large garlands, worth three bucks a 
throw, and paw the ground in ecstasy of 
woe. And friends will wear crape bow- 
knots on their tiles, while I look down (or 
up) a million miles, and wonder why those 
people never knew how smooth I was until 
my spirit flew. When I cash in I will not 
care a yen for all the praise that's heaped 
upon me then; serene and silent, in my 
handsome box, I shall not heed the lauda- 
tory talks, and all the pomp and all the vain 
display, will just be pomp and feathers 
thrown away. So tell me now, while I am 
on the earth, your estimate of my surprising 
worth; O tell mc what a looloo-bird I am, 
and fill me full of taffy and of jam! 



After The 
Game 



[93] 



Nero's 
Fiddle 



[94] 



Walt Mason 



WE HAVE often roasted Nero that 
he played the violin, while his na- 
tive Rome was burning and the 
firemen raised a din; there he sat and 
played "Bedelia," heedless of the fiery 
storm, while the fire chief pranced and 
sweated in his neat red uniform. And I 
often think that Nero had a pretty level 
head; would the fire have been extin- 
guished had he fussed around instead? 
Would the fire insurance folks have loos- 
ened up a shekel more, had old Nero 
squirted water on some grocer's cellar door? 
When there comes a big disaster, people 
straightway lose their wits; they go round 
with hands a-wringing, sweating blood and 
throwing fits; but the wise man sits and fid- 
dles, plays a tune from end to end, for it 
never pays to worry over things you cannot 
mend. It is good to ofifer battle when catas- 
trophes advance, it is well to keep on scrap- 
ping while a fellow has a chance; but when 
failure is as certain as the coming of the 
dusk, then it's wise to take your fiddle and 
fall back on "Money Musk." 



Walt Mason 



IF YOU should chance to mention 
Death, most men will have a grouch; 
and yet to die is nothing more than 
going to your couch, when you have done 
your little stunt, performed the evening 
chores, wound up the clock, blown out the 
light, and put the cat outdoors. The good 
old world jogged smoothly on before you 
had your fling; and it will jog as smoothly 
on when you have cashed your string. King 
Death himself is good and kind ; he always 
does his best to soothe the heart that's sor- 
rowful, and give the weary rest; but there 
are evils in his train that daunt the stoutest 
soul, and one of them may serve to end this 
cheerful rigmarole. I always have a haunt- 
ing dread that when I come to die, the 
papers of the town will tell how some in- 
surance guy, paid up the money that was 
due to weeping kin of mine, before the fu- 
neral procesh had fallen out of line; and 
thus they'll use me for an ad, some Old 
Line Life to boom, before I've had a chance 
to get acquainted with my tomb! 



The Real 
Terror 



[95] 



Walt Mason 



The 
Talksmiths 



IN THE HOUR of stress, when the out- 
look's blue, and the nation's in a box, 
there's always a statesman, strong and 
true, who comes to the front and talks. If 
wind would banish the ills we see, and drive 
all our troubles hence, then the talksmith's 
tongue would our bulwark be, and his 
larynx our chief defense. We groan and 
sweat at the forge and mill, to see that our 
tax is paid, and the money all goes to pay 
the bill for the noise in congress made. 
Wherever you go the talksmith stands, with 
his winning smile and smirk, and busts the 
welkin and waves his hands — but doesn't 
get down to work. Ah, well, my friends, 
we shall scrape and peck along till the judg- 
ment day, when the talksmith climbs on the 
old world's wreck, and talks till he burns 
away! 



[96] 



Walt Mason 



IT IS WOMAN'S firm ambition to at- 
tain a high position, and he surely is a 
caitiff who regrets to see her rise; I for 
one will hand her praises, load her down 
with cheering phrases, if, in seeking higher 
levels, she does not neglect the pies. Let 
her study art and science, read up Black- 
stone and his clients, soak herself in Kant 
or Browning and the truth that in them 
lies; she may dote on Keats or Ruddy — if 
she doesn't cease to study worthy books and 
able pamphlets treating of uplifting pies. 
Now and then my spirit, shrinking, gets to 
doubting, brooding, thinking that the pies 
we have at present are not like the pies of 
yore; modern dames are good at making 
crusts for pies, and good at baking, but they 
buy the stuff to fill them at the nearest 
grocer's store. Are our pies as good as 
ever? Do our modern dames endeavor to 
produce the pie triumphant, pies that make 
us better men? If they do, then who would 
chide them, who would blame them or de- 
ride them, if they turn from pies and cookies 
to their Ibsen books again? 



Woman 's 
Progress 



[97] 




*'I saiv the form of a cringing bum all crumpled 
and soaked ivith gin. " 



Walt Mason 



I WENT one night with my high-priced 
thirst to loaf in the booze bazar, and as 
I sampled the old red dope I leaned 
on the handsome bar. My purse was full 
of the good long green, and my raiment was 
smooth and new, and I looked as slick as a 
cabbage rose that's kissed by the nice wet 
dew. Behind the bottles a mirror stood, 
as large as your parlor floor, and I looked 
and looked in the shining glass, and won- 
dered, and looked some more. My own re- 
flection did not appear, but there where it 
should have been, I saw the form of a cring- 
ing bum all crumpled and soaked with gin. 
His nose was red and his eyes were dim, 
unshorn was his swollen face, and I thought 
it queer such a seedy bo would come to so 
smooth a place. I turned around for a bet- 
ter look at this effigy of despair, and nearly 
fell in a little heap, for the effigy wasn't 
there! The barkeep laughed. "It's the 
Magic Glass," he said, with a careless yawn ; 
"it shows a man how he's apt to look years 
hence when his roll is gonel" 



The Magic 
Mirror 



[99] 



The Misfit 
Face 



[lOO 



Walt Mason 



A CERTAIN man, who lived some 
place, was gifted with a misfit face; 
when Nature built his mug she broke 
all rules and tried to play a joke; of pale 
red hair he had a thatch, his eyes were green 
and didn't match ; his nose was pug, his chin 
was weak, and freckles grew on either 
cheek, and sorrel whiskers fringed his chop, 
too thin to ever make a crop. And people, 
when they first beheld his countenance, just 
stopped and yelled. But when they'd known 
him for a while, and marked his glad and 
genial smile; when passing time had made 
them wise to all the kindness in those eyes; 
and when they found that from his face 
there came no sayings mean or base, that 
misfit mug they'd often scan, and cry: "He 
is a handsome man!" 



Walt Mason 



A LARGE black dog, of stately mien, 
was walking o'er the village green, 
on some important errand bent; a 
little cur, not worth a cent, observed him 
passing by, and growled, and barked a 
while, and yapped, and howled. The big 
one did not deign a look, but walked along, 
like prince or dook. The cur remarked, 
beneath its breath: ''That big four-flush- 
er's scared to death! Those great big 
brutes are never game; now just watch 
Fido climb his frame!" The big black dog 
went stalking on, as calm and tranquil as 
the dawn ; he knew the cur was at his heels ; 
he heard its yaps and snarls and squeals, and 
yet he never looked around, or blinked an 
eye, or made a sound; his meditations had a 
tone that mangy pups have never known. 
The cur, unnoticed, lost all fear; it grabbed 
the big dog by the ear ; the latter paused just 
long enough to take the small one by the 
scruff, and shake him gently to and fro; and 
then he let poor Fido go, and said, in quiet 
tones: "Now get!" And Fido's doubtless 
running yet. Suppose you see if you can 
nail the moral hidden in this tale. 



A Dog 

Story 



[lOl] 



The 
Pitcher 



1 



[102] 



Walt Mason 



I'D LIKE to be a Pitcher, and on the 
Diamond stand, a cap upon my Fore- 
head, a Ball within my Hand. Before 
Applauding Thousands, I'd throw the 
Curving Sphere, and From the eyes of 
Batsmen, bring forth the Briny Tear. I'd 
make my Occupation a thing of Pomp and 
Dread, I'd tie Myself in Bow-Knots, and 
stand upon my Head; a string of wild Con- 
tortions would mark my Every Throw, and 
all the Fans would Murmur: "Oh, Girls, 
ain't he a Jo?" And when I left the Dia- 
mond, on Rest or Pleasure bent, the Kids 
would trail behind me, and Worship as they 
went; and all the Sporty Grownups would 
say: "He's Warm Enough!" and fair and 
Cultured Ladies would cry: "He is the 
Stuflf!" I'd like to be a Pitcher, while I 
Remain Below; by day to Gather Garlands, 
by night to Count the Dough. 



Walt Mason 



ONCE A HUNTER met a lion near 
the hungry critter's lair, and the 
way that lion mauled him was de- 
cidedly unfair; but the hunter never 
whimpered when the surgeons, with their 
thread, sewed up forty-seven gashes in his 
mutilated head; and he showed the scars 
in triumph, and they gave him pleasant 
fame, and he always blessed the lion that 
had camped upon his frame. Once that 
hunter, absent-minded, sat upon a hill of 
ants, and about a million bit him, and you 
should have seen him dance! And he used 
up lots of language of a deep magenta tint, 
and apostrophized the insects in a style un- 
fit to print. And it's thus with wordly 
troubles ; when the big ones come along, we 
serenely go to meet them, feeling valiant, 
bold and strong, but the weary little wor- 
ries with their poisoned stings and smarts, 
put the lid upon our courage, make us gray, 
and break our hearts. 



Lions and 
Ants 



[103] 



Walt Mason 



The 

Nameless 

Dead 



[104] 



WE ONLY know they fought and 
died, and o'er their graves the 
wind has sighed, for many a long, 
slow- footed year; and winter's snow has 
drifted here; and in the dawning w^armth 
of spring the joyous birds came here to sing; 
we only know that rest is sweet to weary 
hearts and toiling feet, and they who sleep 
beneath the sod gave all they had to give to 
God. And in the radiance of the Throne, 
their names are known — their names are 
known! We know not from what homes 
they came; we can but guess their dreams 
of fame; but lamps for them did vainly 
burn, and mothers waited their return, and 
listened, at some cottage door, for steps that 
sounded never more; and loving eyes grew 
dim with tears, and hearts grew old with 
grief of years. And here they sleep, as they 
have slept, since legions o'er the country 
swept; where mothers wait before the 
Throne, their names are known — their 
names are known! 



Walt Mason 



WHEN I HEAR a noble singer reel- 
ing off entrancing noise, then I 
bend in admiration, and his music 
never cloys. And I feel a high ambition 
as a singer to excel, and I put my voice in 
training, and I prance around and yell; oh, 
I dish up trills and warbles, and I think, 
throughout the day, that I'll have Caruso 
faded ere a month has rolled away. Then 
the neighbors come and see me, and they 
give me stern reproof, saying I am worse 
than forty yellow cats upon the roof. When 
I see a splendid painting it appeals to brain 
and heart, and I blow myself for brushes 
and decide to follow Art. With a can of 
yellow ochre and a jug of turpentine, I pro- 
duce some masterpieces that would make 
old Rubens pine, and 1 talk about Perspec- 
tive and the whatness of the whence, till a 
neighbor comes and asks me what I'll take 
to paint his fence. When I read a rattling 
volume I invest in pens and ink, and pre- 
pare to write some chapters that will make 
the nation think; and I rear some Vandyke 
whiskers and neglect to cut my hair, and I 
read up Bulwer Lytton for some good old 
oaths to swear; when I get the proper bear- 
ing, and the literary style, then I'm asked 
to write a pamphlet booming some one's 
castor lie! 



Ambition 



[105] 



Walt Mason 



Night's 
Illusions 



AT NIGHT you seek your downy 
bed, and ere you sink to sleep and 
dreams, that strange machine you 
call your head is full of weird and wondrous 
schemes; they seem too grand and great to 
fail; they'll fill your treasury with dough; 
but morning shows them flat and stale — I 
often wonder why 'tis so. At eve you are a 
blithesome soul, your future is the one good 
bet; you gaily quaff the flowing bowl, or 
dance the stately minuet; your joy's ob- 
trusive and intense; but morning finds you 
full of woe; you'd sell yourself for twen- 
ty cents — I often wonder why 'tis so. At 
night you walk beneath the stars, and high 
ambitions fill your soul; you'll batter down 
opposing bars, and fight your way, and win 
the goal; but morning passes you the ice, 
your visions fade, your spirit's low; you 
spend the long day shaking dice — I often 
wonder why 'tis so. At night you think of 
things sublime, and inspiration fills your 
heart; you think you'll write a deathless 
rhyme, or cut a swath in realms of art; but 
morning finds you looking sick; you feel 
you haven't any show; you dig some bait 
and seek the creek — I often wonder why 
'tis so. 



[IC^] 



Walt Mason 



BEFORE THE FIGHT the bruiser 
said: "I'll surely kill that aleck 
dead! He thinks he has a chance 
with me! His gall is beautiful to see. His 
friends are betting quite a stack, and say 
that I cannot come back. I'm better now, 
I say right here, than ever in my great ca- 
reer; I'm sound and good in wind and limb, 
and I will put the lid on him. Just take 
it from me, take it straight; I'm fit to lick 
a hundredweight of wildcats, wolves or 
rattlesnakes; I'll whip him in a brace of 
shakes!" The fight was o'er; the bruiser 
sat, his head too large to fit his hat, his eyes 
bunged up, his teeth knocked in; he mut- 
tered, with a swollen grin: "Well, yes, he 
licked me, that blamed ape! But I was 
badly out of shape; I didn't train the way 
I should; my knees were stiff, my wind no 
good; I had lumbago and the gout — ^^no 
wonder that he knocked me out! But just 
you wait ten years or more! I'm after that 
four-flusher's gore! When I have rested 
for a spell, and when my face is good and 
well, I'll spring a challenge good and hard, 
and whip him in his own back yard!" 



Before and 
After 



i[i07] 



The Poet 
Balks 



[io8] 



Walt Mason 



F OLD JIM RILEY came to town, 
to read a bundle of his rhyme, I guess 
you couldn't hold me down — I'd want 
to hear him every time. I wouldn't heed 
the tempest's shriek; I'd walk ten miles and 
not complain, to hear Jim Hoosier Riley 
speak. But I would not go round a block 
to see a statesman saw the air, to hear a 
hired spellbinder talk, like a faker at the 
county fair. For statesmen are as thick as 
fleas, and poets, they are far between; one 
song that lingers on the breeze is worth a 
million yawps, I ween. If John Mc- 
Cutcheon came to town, to make some pic- 
tures on the wall, I'd tear the whole blamed 
doorway down to be the first one in the 
hall; you couldn't keep me in my bed if I 
was dying there of croup ; the push would 
find me at the head of the procession, with 
a whoop. But I won't push my fat old 
frame across a dozen yards of bricks, to list 
to men whose only fame is based on pull 
and politics. 



Walt Mason 



I LOVE the sun and the gentle breeze, 
and the brook that winds through the 
pleasant vale; and I love the birds, and 
I love the trees, and Fm always glad when 
I'm out of jail. We are governed now by 
so many laws that liberty's dead, and we've 
heard its knell, and the wise man carries a 
set of saws, to cut his way from a prison 
cell. The grocer wails in a dungeon deep, 
for he sold an egg that was out of date; 
the baker's fetters won't let him sleep, a 
loaf of his bread was under weight. The 
butcher beats at his prison door, and fills 
the air with his doleful moan; they'll cut 
off his head when the night is o'er, for he 
sold a steak that was mostly bone. The 
milkman's there in the prison yard, and the 
jailers flog him and make him jrmp; it 
seems to me that his fate is hard, though he 
did draw milk from the old home pump. 
A sickly weed, that was lank and thin, em- 
bellished my lot, at the edge ot town, and 
the peelers nabbed me and ran me in, be- 
cause I neglected to cut it down. I dropped 
a can as I crossed the park, and that is a 
crime that's against the law; so they shut 
me up in a dungeon dark, with its rusty 
chains and its moldy straw. I love the 
brook and the summer breeze, and I'm 
rather mashed on the howling gale; and I'm 
foiid of robins and bumblebees, and I'm al- 
ways glad when I'm out of jail. 



Governed 
Too Much 



[109] 



Walt Mason 



Success In 
Life 



THE HERO of this simple tale was 
born of parents beastly poor; they 
toiled and wrought without avail to 
scrape a living from the moor. Our hero 
early made resolve that he would strive for 
greater heights; "let others in these ruts 
revolve, and carry on their puny fights; to 
gather wealth, to live in state, is all that 
makes this life worth while; and when I'm 
grown I'll pull my freight, and try to raise 
a mighty pile." His dreams came true, in 
every way, as visions came, in days of old ; 
he took no time for rest or play, but gath- 
ered in fat, yellow gold. By steady steps 
our hero rose, to heights of usefulness and 
fame; he put the kibosh on his foes, and 
held the ace in every game. He laughed 
at figtrees and at vines, and all domestic, 
trifling things; he owned some railways and 
some mines, and was among the copper 
kings. But why detail his glories so? Why 
should we try to count his dimes? It is 
enough for us to know he's been indicted 
twenty times. 



[no] 



Walt Mason 



NOW THE NIGHTS are growing 
longer, and the frost is in the air, and 
it's nice to hug the fireside in your 
trusty rocking chair, with the good wife 
there beside you, feeding cookies to the cat, 
while the energetic children play the dick- 
ens with your hat. O, it's nice to look 
around you, and to feel that you're a king, 
that your coming home at evening makes 
your joyous subjects sing! So you read some 
twenty chapters of old Gibbon's dope on 
Rome, and you know what human bliss is 
in your humble little home I There is really 
nothing better in the way of earthly bliss, 
than to toddle home at evening, and to get a 
welcome kiss, and to know the kids who 
greet you at the pea-green garden gate, have 
been wailing, broken-hearted, that you were 
two minutes late! There is nothing much 
more soothing than a loving woman's smile, 
when she sees your bow-legs climbing o'er 
the bargain counter stile! If you don't ap- 
preciate it, then the bats are in your dome, 
for the greatest king a-living is the monarch 
of a home! 



Home 
Life 



[III] 



Ragles 
and Hens 



[112] 



Walt Mason 



THE EAGLE ought to have a place 
among the false alarms; we place its 
picture on our coins, and on our coat 
of arms; but what did eagles ever do but 
frolic in the sun? They'd be in jail for 
larceny if justice should be done. They 
are not half so good to eat as mallard duck 
or grouse; they'd surely cause a panic in a 
section boarding house; and never in this 
weary world was farmer seen to go, to trade 
a pail of eagle eggs for nails or calico. The 
humble hen, on t'other hand, still helps the 
world along; she lifts the farmer's mort- 
gage as she trills her morning song; she 
yields the fragrant omelet, and when re- 
duced to pie, she makes the boarder feel 
that he at last is fit to die. The eagle does 
not stir the souls of earnest, thoughtful men ; 
and so let's take him from the shield and 
substitute the hen. 



Walt Mason 



IT WAS a bent and ancient man who 
toiled with spade and pick, and down 
his haggard features ran the sweat- 
drops, rolling thick. An-d, as he toiled, his 
gasping sighs spoke darkly of despair; a 
hopeless look was in his eyes, a look of 
grief and care. He toiled, all heedless of 
the crowd that journeyed to and fro; "it 
is a shame," I said, aloud, "that Age should 
suffer so." He overheard me, and he said : 
"I earned this fate, in truth; when young 
I stained the landscape red; I was a Gilded 
Youth. I bought the merchandise that's 
wet, I fooled with games of chance; and 
now, in misery and sweat, I wear the name 
of Pance. I was a rounder and a sport, a 
spender and a blood, and now, when 1 loom 
up in court, my only name is Mud. I filled 
my years with gorgeous breaks, I thought 
my life a game; I threw my money to the 
drakes, and wallowed deep in shame. ' I 
used to hate the sissy-boys, those molly- 
coddle lads, who were content wuth milder 
joys, and salted down the scads; and now I 
see them passing by, in opulence and ease, 
while I, too luckless e'en to die, am doing 
tasks like these. Sometimes, in racking 
dreams I see the money that I burned; but 
do not waste your tears on me — I'm getting 
what I earned!" 



Weary 
Old Age 



[113] 



Ltullaby 



[114] 



Walt Mason 



DARLING, HUSH! your tears are 
welling from your azure angel eyes, 
but you'll do no good by yelling; 
hush, my baby, dear, be wise! I would 
give the soothing syrup that you want, to 
quell this storm, but I fear that it would 
stir up trouble in your darling form. Once 
I prized that syrup highly, thinking it was 
just the stuff, but I wrote to Dr. Wiley, 
and he says it's bad enough. Once the 
doctor, also, prized it, but he found, O 
baby fair, after he had analyzed it, that an 
ounce would kill a bear. It's supposed to 
cure the colic, and to check the infant 
spleen, but it's strongly alcoholic, and con- 
tains some Paris green; it has killed a 
frightful number, and will kill a legion 
more; sleep, my darling, sleep and slum- 
ber, while your daddy walks the floor! 



Walt Mason 



THE TEACHER in the country school, 
expounding lesson, sum and rule, and 
teaching children how to rise to 
heights where lasting honor lies, deserves 
a fat and handsome wage, for she's a tri- 
umph of this age. No better work than 
hers is done beneath the good old shining 
sun; she builds the future of the state; she 
guides the youths who will be great; she 
gives the childish spirit wings, and points 
the way to noble things. And we, who do all 
things so well, and of our "institooshuns" 
yell, reward the teacher with a roll that 
brings a shudder to her soul. We have our 
coin done up in crates, and gladly hand it 
to the skates who fuss around in politics and 
fool us with their time-worn tricks. In 
Congress one cheap common jay will loaf 
a week, and draw more pay than some tired 
teacher, toiling near, will ever see in half 
a year. If I was running this old land, I'd 
have a lot of statesmen canned; and con- 
gressmen, and folks like those, would have 
to work for board and clothes; I'd put the 
lid on scores of snaps, and pour into the 
teachers' laps the wealth that now away is 
sinned, for words and wigglejaws and wind. 



The 

School- 
marm 



[IIS] 



The 

Sunday 

Paper 



[ii6] 



Walt Mason 



I SPENT five cents for the Sunday 
"Dart," and hauled it home in a two- 
wheeled cart; I piled the sections upon 
the floor, till they reached as high as the 
kitchen door; I hung the chromos upon the 
wall, though there wasn't room to hang 
them all, and the yard was littered some ten 
feet deep with "comic sections" that made 
me weep; and there were sections of pink 
and green, a woman's section and magazine, 
and sheets of music the which if played 
would quickly make an audience fade; and 
there were patterns for women's gowns and 
also for gentlemen's hand-me-downs; and 
a false mustache and a rubber doll, and a 
deck of cards and a parasol. Now men are 
busy with dray and cart, a-hauling away 
the Sunday "Dart." 



Walt Mason 



THE CHILDREN of our neighbor- 
hood don't train their parents as they 
should; they let the latter go their 
gait, and do not try to keep them straight, 
and so those giddy parents roam, at sinful 
hours, away from home. They try to cheer 
their foolish hearts, joy-riding in the devil- 
carts; or you will find, when they are 
missed, that they are playing bridge or 
whist, or wasting all the golden day in some 
absurd and useless way. When I was young 
I seldom saw a sporty pa or giddy ma; 
the children of that elder day had parents 
tutored to obey; the mothers seldom left 
their tubs to fool around at euchre clubs, 
and fathers, when the day was dead, took 
ofif their rags and went to bed. Ah, seldom 
then were children seen, with furrowed 
brow and sombre mien, distraught by gali- 
vanting dads, or mas who played the cards 
for scads! O children, to yourselves be 
true! Round up the galivanting crew of 
parents who are trotting fast, before it is too 
everlast — ing late to give the bunch a 
chance; come forth, O children, from your 
trance! 



Gay 
Parents 



["7] 



Walt Mason 



Dad I ^AD IS growing old and weary and 
I f there's silver in his hair, and his 
"^^^ eyes are always solemn, he has seen 
so much of care; he has seen so much of 
sorrow, he has known so much of tears, he 
has borne the heat and burden of so many 
bitter years! Dad's already in the twilight 
of life's little fleeting day, and perhaps we'll 
often ponder, when his load is laid away, 
on the steps we might have saved him when 
his feet and hands were sore, on the joy 
we might have given to the heart that beats 
no more. We'll recall a hundred errands 
that we might have gladly run, and a hun- 
dred kindly actions that we might have 
gaily done ; we'll remember how he labored, 
while the boys were all at play, when the 
darkness hides him from us at the closing 
of the day. 



[ii8] 



Walt Mason 



THE VILLAGE Marshal, watchful 
wight, was bound to hold his job 
down right. He saw John Bunyan 
running loose, and put him in the calaboose. 
Now John, the tinker, had renown for jar- 
ring up the little town, and all the local 
sages said that he would never die in bed. 
But when he found himself in soak, he said : 
"The sporting life's no joke; here's where 
I cut it out and strive to show the world 
that I'm alive." And in that dark and dis- 
mal den he sat, with paper, ink and pen, 
and wrote the book that people hold as be- 
ing worth its weight in gold. The job was 
hard; in cells beneath, they heard the grind- 
ing of his teeth; whene'er he wrote a sen- 
tence wise, he had to stop and swat the flies ; 
the grub was poor, the water foul, the jailer 
sombre as an owl; the jail was full of dirt 
and dust, the chains he wore were brown 
with rust. Yet through it all, by hook or 
crook, he toiled and wrote his matchless 
book! O, authors of the present day, whose 
books are dry as bales of hay, who grind 
"best sellers" by the ton, which last from 
rise till set of sun, who roll in comfort and 
ice cream, dictating stories by the ream, try 
Bunyan's plan — it may avail — and write a 
masterpiece in jail! 



John 
Bunyan 



["9] 




'My country, hear my ivord! you are a 
humming bird, also a peach!" 



Walt Mason 



MY country, beauteous land! I'll sing, 
if you will stand, a song to thee! 
My harp is rather coarse, my voice 
is somewhat hoarse, yet will I try to force 
some melody. Fair land that saw my birth, 
gem of the whole blamed earth, hark to my 
screeds! Tell me, O tell me why prices 
have soared so high that man can scarcely 
buy things that he needs. Things that a 
man must eat — lemons and prunes and 
meat — cost like Sam Hill; carpets and rugs 
and mats, neckties and shoes and hats, shirt- 
ing to hide his slats, empty his till. All 
through the week I work, like an unlaun- 
dered Turk, for a few bucks ; no odds how 
hard I try, of wealth I'm always shy, and 
when I travel I ride on the trucks. They 
say that half a plunk bought more and 
better junk, in the old days, than will two 
bones or more, in the big modern store, 
since prices learned to soar, five hundred 
ways. My country, hear my word! You 
are a hummingbird, also a peach! Splendid 
in peace and war, thou most effulgent star 
— tell me why prices are clear out of reach! 



A Near 
Anthem 



[121] 



The 

ISJation 's 
Hope 



[122] 



Walt Mason 



THE NATION'S sliding down the 
path that leads to Ruin's lair, and 
all of Ruin's dogs of wrath will 
chew its vitals there; each day we deeper 
plunge in grief; we'll soon have reached 
the worst; why don't we turn, then, for re- 
lief, to William Randolph Hurst? It seems 
we haven't any sense, that we these ills en- 
dure; he's told us oft, in confidence, that 
he alone is pure; he is the bulwark of our 
hope — our last shield and our first; then 
let's rely upon the dope of William Ran- 
dolph Hurst. He offers us the helping 
hand, he fain would be our guide; and still 
we wreck this blooming land, and let all 
virtue slide; of all that is the country's best 
we're making wienerwurst; O let us lean 
upon the breast of William Randolph 
Hurst! He stands and waits, serene, sub- 
lime, he beckons and he sings! He wears 
a halo all the time, and he is growing wings! 
So let us quit the course that harms, for- 
sake the things accurst, and rest, like chil- 
dren, in the arms of William Randolph 
Hurst! 




Walt Mason, when a reporter on the Atchison Globe, 
1885 — "In life's early bloom when my bosom was 
young" 



Walt Mason 



YOU KNOW the man of kingly air? 
You run across him everywhere. He 
seems to think his hat a crown; he 
talks as though he handed down most all 
the wisdom that the seers have gathered in 
a thousand years. His dignity is most sub- 
lime; to joke about him is a crime, and 
when you meet him it is wise to lift your 
hat and close your eyes; and it would please 
him if you'd just lie down and grovel in the 
dust. That is the wiser course, I say, but 
I'm a feeble-minded jay, and when I meet 
the swelled-up man, I jolly him the best 
I can; I would to him the fact recall that 
he's but mortal, after all. He's naught but 
bones and legs and trunk, and lungs and 
lights, and kindred junk; he breathes the 
same old germy air that's breathed by 
hoboes everywhere. And when he dies, as 
die he must, he'll make as cheap a grade of 
dust as any Richard Roe in town ; the monu- 
ment that holds him down may tell his 
glories for a while, but folks will read it 
with a smile, and say : "That dead one must 
have thought that he was Johnnie on the 
spot, when he was on this earthly shore; I 
never heard of him before." 



The 

Important 

Man 



[123] 



Toddling 
Home 



[124] 



Walt Mason 



A THOUSAND cares oppress the 
mind, in life's long summer day; 
we weary of the galling grind, and 
endless seems the way. The journey's really 
not so long; we have not far to roam; and 
soon we'll hear the evensong, and then we'll 
toddle home. Our burdens seem an awful 
pile, and yet they're not so great; if we 
would pack them with a smile, we would 
not feel the weight. We murmur as we 
hold the plow, and guide it through the 
loam; but dusk is coming, even now, and 
soon we'll toddle home. We see a cloud of 
sullen gray, and straightway we repine; 
"the storm is rising fast," we say, "the sun 
no more will shine." But in a space his 
golden beams will light the azure dome, 
until shall come the time for dreams, and 
then we'll toddle home. No trouble lasts 
if we are brave, and take a manly stand; 
and Fear becomes a cringing slave, if we 
but raise a hand; the evil that disturbs our 
rest is but a shadow gnome; the sun is sink- 
ing in the west, and soon we'll toddle home. 
Then let us toddle home as gay as birds, that 
never weep; as glad as children, tired of 
play, who only wish to sleep; and while 
Recording Angels write our names in heav- 
en's tome, we'll seek our couch, and say 
good night when we have toddled home. 



Walt Mason 



THE WISE MAN, with some boys in 
tow, beheld a pin upon the ground. 
"My lads," he said, his face aglow, 
"come here and see what I have found! 
'Tis but a pin, a humble pin, on which the 
passing thousands tread, and some unthink- 
ing men would grin, to see me lift it from 
its bed. And yet, my lads, the trifles count; 
the drops of water make the sea; the grains 
of sand compose the mount, and moments 
make eternity. Each hour to man its chances 
brings, but he will gain no goodly store, if 
he despises little things, nor sees the pin up- 
on his floor. I stoop and grasp this little 
pin; I'll keep it, maybe, seven years; it yet 
may let the sunshine in, and brighten up a 
day of tears." The Wise Man bent to 
reach the pin, and lost his balance, with a 
yell; he hit the pavement with his chin; his 
hat into the gutter fell; he rolled into a 
crate of eggs, and filled the air with disrrial 
moans, and then a dray ran o'er his legs, 
and broke about a gross of bones. They 
took him home upon a door, and there he 
moans — so tough he feels: "Those dad- 
blamed children never more will listen to 
my helpful spiels!" 



Trifling 
Things 



[125] 



Trusty 
Dobbin 



[126] 



Walt Mason 



THEY DOOM you, Dobbin, now and 
then, they say your usefulness is gone; 
some blame fool thing designed by 
men has put the equine race in pawn. They 
doomed you, and your hopes were low, 
when bicycles were all the rage ; they said : 
"The horse will have to go — he lags 
superfi'ous on the stage!" They doomed 
you when the auto-car was given its re- 
splendent birth. "Thus sinks the poor old 
horse's star — he'll have to beat it from the 
earth!" And now they're dooming you 
some more, there are so many motor things; 
men scorch the earth with sullen roar, or 
float around on hardware wings. They 
doom you, Dobbin, now and then, and call 
you has-been, and the like; but while this 
world is breeding men, the horse will still be 
on the pike. No painted thing of cogs and 
wheels and entrails made of noisy brass can 
e'er supplant a horse's heels, or make man 
grudge a horse his grass. No man-made 
trap of bars and springs can love or con- 
fidence impart, nor give the little neigh 
that brings emotion to the horseman's heart. 
O build your cars and ships and planes, and 
doom old Dobbin as you will! While men 
have souls and hearts and brains, old Dob- 
bin shall be with us still 1 



Walt Mason 



AT THE hash-works where I board, 
but one topic now prevails: "How 
the price of grub has soared!" 
Drearily the landlord wails. In his old, 
accustomed place, he is sitting, at each meal ; 
sad and corpse-like is his face, as he carves 
his ancient veaL When I ask that solemn 
jay, if he'll pass the butter 'round, "butter 
costs," I hear him say, "almost half a bone 
a pound." When I want a slice of duck, 
his expression is a sin; "this thin drake cost 
me a buck, and the quacks were not thrown 
in." Through the muddy coffee's steam, I 
can hear him saying now: "I desired a 
pint of cream, and they charged me for a 
cow." "Let me have some beans," I cried 
— I was hungry as could be; "sure!" he 
wearily replied; "shall I give you two, or 
three? Beans," he said, "long years ago, 
of rank cheapness were the signs ; now they 
cost three scads a throw — and you do not 
get the vines." Once, at morn, I wished 
an egg, and the landlord had a swoon; with 
his head soaked in a keg, he regained his 
mind by noon; "once," he moaned, "an egg 
was cheap; times have changed, alas! since 
then; now the price would make you weep 
— and they don't throw in the hen!" 



The High 
Prices 



[127] 



Omar 
Khayyam 



[128] 



Walt Mason 



OMAR, of the golden pen, come, O 
come to us again! 'Neath thy fig- 
tree and thy vine, with thy bread and 
jug of wine, seat thyself again, and write, 
in the caustic vein, or light. Thou who 
swatted many heads, tore so many fakes to 
shreds, made the ancient humbugs hump, 
kept the wise guys on the jump — come, 
great Omar, from the mists, come and swat 
thy parodists! Come and give the rhyme- 
sters fits — all the jingling, grass-fed wits, 
who profane thy noble verse; come and 
place them in the hearse! They who love 
the Khayyam strain, treasure from a mas- 
ter's brain, satire keen as tested steel — they 
who love old Omar feel that the imitative 
crew should receive the wages due, be re- 
warded for their toil with a bath in boiling 
oil. But the law is in the way; if the poets 
we should slay, we'd be pulled by the police 
for disturbance of the peace. Come, then, 
Omar, from the shade, where thou hast too 
long delayed, and with sundry skillful 
twists, wipe out all those parodists. 



Walt Mason 



ONE DAY a farmer found a bone; he 
thought at first it was a stone, and 
threw it at a passing snake ere he 
discovered his mistake. But when he knew 
it was a bone, and not a diamond or a stone, 
he took it to an ancient sage, who said: 
"In prehistoric age, this was the shin-bone 
of a Thor-dineriomegantosaur-megopium- 
permastodon-letheriumsohelpmejohn." The 
farmer cried: "Dad bing my eyes! Was 
ever man so wondrous wise? He gazes on 
a piece of bone, that I supposed to be a 
stone, and, with a confidence sublime, he 
looks across the void of time, and gives 
this fossil bone a name, the fragment of 
some creature's frame! To have such 
knowledge, sir, as thine, I'd give those fer- 
tile farms of mine." "Don't envy me," the 
sage replied, and shook his weary head, and 
sighed, "Your life to me seems full and 
sweet — you always have enough to eat!'* 



Knowledge 
is Power 



[129] 




"O, it may be all right for a ivoman so old, 
to leap 'er the table and chairs. ' ' 



Walt Mason 



MY GRANDMOTHER suffered and 
languished in pain, till she read in 
a magazine ad, that a woman should 
put on a sweater and train, and help the 
Delsartean fad. And now when I go to 
my midday repast, no meal is made ready 
for me; my grandmother's climbing a forty- 
foot mast or shinning up into a tree. The 
house has a stairway that she will not use 
she always slides down on the rail; she's 
spoiled all the floors with her spiked sprint- 
ing shoes, and she laughs when I put up a 
wail. O, it may be all right for a woman 
so old, to leap o'er the table and chairs, 
while I try to fill up on the grub that is 
cold, with the dishes all piled on the stairs. 
Today I protested with many a tear, made 
a moan like a maundering dunce; and she 
kicked all the lights from the brass chan- 
delier, and turned forty handsprings at 
once. I told her I never could prosper and 
thrive, on victuals unfit for a man; she 
offered to throw me three falls out of five, 
Graeco-Roman or catch-as-catch-can. 



Physical 
Culture 



[131] 



Football 



[132] 



Walt Mason 



THE GAME was ended, and the noise, 
at last had died away, and now they 
gathered up the boys where they in 
pieces lay. And one was hammered in the 
ground by many a jolt and jar; some frag- 
ments never have been found, they flew 
away so far. They found a stack of tawny 
hair, some fourteen cubits high; it was the 
half-back, lying there, where he had 
crawled to die. They placed the pieces on 
a door, and from the crimson field, that 
hero then they gently bore, like soldier on 
his shield. The surgeon toiled the livelong 
night above the gory wreck; he got the 
ribs adjusted right, the wishbone and the 
neck. He soldered on the ears and toes, 
and got the spine in place, and fixed a gutta- 
percha nose upon the mangled face. And 
then he washed his hands and said: "I'm 
glad that task is done!" The half-back 
raised his fractured head, and cried: "I 
call this fun!" 



Walt Mason 



YOU HAVEN'T much sense, but I 
love you well, O wild-eyed broncho 
of mine! Your heart is hot with the 
heat of hell, and a cyclone's in your spine; 
your folly grows with increasing age; you 
stand by the pasture bars, and bare your 
teeth in a dotard rage, and kick at the smil- 
ing stars. As homely you as the face of sin, 
with brands on your mottled flanks, and 
saddle scars on your dusky skin, and burs 
on your tail and shanks! and old — so old 
that the men are dead, who branded your 
neck and side; and their sons have lived and 
gone to bed, and turned to the wall and 
died. But it's you for the long, long weary 
trail, o'er the hills and the desert sand, by 
the side of the bones of the steeds that fail 
and perish on either hand. It's you for the 
steady and tireless lope, through canyon or 
mountain pass; to be flogged at night with 
a length of rope, and be fed on a bunch of 
grass. 



The 
Broncho 



inz'] 




"And then I float anuay, anvay, to moonlit 
castles in Cathay. " 



THERE IS no tune that grips my heart, 
and seems to pull me all apart, like 
this old Serenade; it seems to breathe 
of distant lands, and orange groves and 
silver sands, and troubadour and maid. It's 
freighted with a gentle w^oe as old as all 
the seas that flow, as young as yesterday; 
as changeless as the stars above, as yearn- 
ing as a woman's love for true knight far 
away. It seems a prayer, serene and pure; 
a tale of love that will endure when they 
who loved are dust, when earthly songs are 
heard no more, and bridal wreaths are with- 
ered sore, and wedding rings are rust. It's 
weary with a lover's care; it's wailing with 
a deep despair, that only lovers learn; and 
yet through all its sadness grope the sing- 
ing messengers of hope for joys that will 
return. O, gentle, soothing Serenade! 
When I am beaten down and frayed, with 
all my hopes in pawn, when I've forgotten 
how to laugh, I wind up my old phono- 
graph, and turn the music on! And then I 
float away, away, to moonlit castles in 
Cathay, or Araby or Spain, and underneath 
the glowing skies I read of love in damsels' 
eyes, and dream, and dream again! 



Schubert's 
Serenade 



[135] 



Health 
Food 



Walt Mason 



THE DOCTOR is sure that my health 
is poor, he says that I waste away; so 
bring me a can of the shredded bran, 
and a bale of the toasted hay; O feed me 
on rice and denatured ice, and the oats that 
the horses chew, and a peck of slaw and a 
load of straw and a turnip and squash or 
two. The doctor cries that it won't be wise 
to eat of the things I like; if I make a break 
at a sirloin steak, my stomach is sure to 
strike; I dare not reach for the luscious 
peach, or stab at the lemon pie; if I make a 
pass at the stew, alas! I'm sure to curl up 
and die. If a thing looks good, it must be 
eschewed, if bad, I may eat it down; so 
bring me a jar of the rich pine tar from 
the Health Food works up town; and bring 
me a bag of your basic slag, and a sack of 
your bolted prunes, and a bowl of slop from 
the doctor's shop, and ladle it in with 
spoons! I will have to feed on the jim- 
son weed, and the grass that the cows may 
leave, for the doctor's sure that my health is 
poor, and I know that he'd not deceive. 



[■36] 



Walt Mason 



SHE CALLED upon her lawyer, and 
said to him : "Of course this visit will 
surprise you — I want a nice divorce." 
"Why, madam," cried the lawyer, "you're 
talking through your hat; your husband just 
adores you, and all the town knows that." 
"Of course I know he loves me," she an- 
swered, with a smile, "but that will cut no 
figure — divorces are in style. Decrees were 
won in triumph by friends of mine, of 
late, and every time I meet them I feel so 
out of date! I've just come from a party — 
the swellest of the town; I felt like some 
old woman who wears a last year's gown; 
and all the ladies chattered of husbands in 
their string, decrees of separation, and all 
that sort of thing." "But, madam," said the 
lawyer, "what reasons can you give? For 
better, finer husbands than yours, I think, 
don't live." "What do I want with rea- 
sons?" she answered, in a huff; "I want a 
separation, and that should be enough; I 
want the rare distinction a court of justice 
lends ; Fm feeling too old-fashioned among 
my lady friends. I must have some good 
reasons? I do not think you're nice; his 
name is William Henry — that surely will 
suffice?" 



Fashion *s 
Devotee 



[137] 



Christmas 



[138] 



Walt Mason 



THE CHRISTMAS bells again ring 
out a message sweet and clear; and 
harmony is round about, and happi- 
ness is near; so let us all sing, once again, 
as on an elder day: "God rest you, merry 
gentlemen, let nothing you dismay!" For- 
get the office and the mart, the week-day 
hook and crook, and loosen up your with- 
ered heart, as well as pocketbook; forget 
the ledger and the pen, and watch the chil- 
dren play; God rest you, merry gentlemen, 
let nothing you dismay! The Christmas 
time with peace is fraught, from strife and 
sorrow free; and every wish and every 
thought should kind and gentle be; in 
worlds beyond our mortal ken this is a holy 
day; God rest you, merry gentlemen, let 
nothing you dismay! Today, from Eden's 
plains afar, the shepherds converse hold, 
and watch again the risen star, as in the days 
of old; and as those shepherds watched it 
then, so may we watch today; God rest you, 
merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay! 



Walt Mason 



THE TIGHTWAD is a pleasant soul 
who freezes strongly to his roll, until 
he hasn't any; his bundle colors all 
his dreams, and when awake he's full of 
schemes to nail another penny. He counts 
his roubles day by day, and when a nickel 
gets away, it nearly drives him dotty; he 
grovels to the man of biz who has a bigger 
roll than his, and to the poor he's haughty. 
All things upon this earth are trash that 
can't be bought or sold for cash, in Tight- 
wad's estimation; the summer breeze, be- 
cause it turns the cranks of mills and pumps 
and churns, receives his toleration; the sun 
is useful in its way; it nourishes the wheat 
and hay — so let the world be sunny; he likes 
to hear the raindrops slosh; they help the 
pumpkin, beet and squash, and such things 
sell for money. The tightwad often is a 
bear around his home, and everywhere, and 
people hate or fear him; since kindness has 
no market price, it's waste of effort to be 
nice to victims who are near him. Me- 
thinks that when the tightwad dies, and to 
his retribution flies, his sentence will be 
funny; they'll load him with a silver hat, 
and boil him in a golden vat, and feed him 
red-hot money! 



The 
Tightwad 



[139] 



\ 



Blue Blood 



[140] 



Walt Mason 



MY SIRES were strong, heroic men, 
who fought on many a crimson 
field; and none could better cut a 
throat, or batter down a foeman's shield; 
and some were knighted by the king, and 
went around with golden spurs, which must 
have been a nuisance when they walked 
among the cockleburs. Their sires were 
barons of the Rhine, who worked a now 
historic graft; they held up travelers by 
day, and quaffed their sack at night, and 
laughed; they always slept upon the floor, 
and never shaved or cut their hair; they 
pawed their victuals with their hands, and 
never heard of underwear. Their sires, 
some centuries before, ran naked through 
the virgin vales, distinguished from the 
other apes because they hadn't any tails. 
And they had sires, still farther back, but 
that dim past is veiled to me, and so I fear 
I cannot claim a really flawless pedigree. 



Walt Mason 



WHEN THE cave man found that he 
needed grub to fill out the bill of 
fare, he went out doors with his 
trusty club, and slaughtered the nearest 
bear; and thus he avoided the butcher's fake 
of selling a pound of bone, and charging it 
up as the sirloin steak that you ordered by 
telephone. The cave man wore, as his Sun- 
day best, the skin of a sheep or goat, and a 
peck of whiskers on his breast, in lieu of a 
vest or coat; so he nothing knew of the 
tailor's knack of sewing a vest all wrong, 
and making a coat with a crooked back, and 
the pants half a foot too long. The cave 
man swallowed his victuals raw, as he sat 
on his nice mud floor; and his only tool was 
his faithful jaw, and he wanted for nothing 
more. He took his drinks at the babbling 
brook, and healthy and gay was he; and he 
never swore at the bungling cook for spoil- 
ing the pie or tea. 



The Cave 
Man 



[14'] 



'The Eyes 
of Lincoln 



[142] 



Walt Mason 



AD EYES, that were patient and ten- 
der, sad eyes, that were steadfast and 
true, and warm with the unchanging 
splendor of courage no ills could subdue! 
Eyes dark with the dread of the morrow, 
and woe for the day that was gone, the 
sleepless companions of sorrow, the watch- 
ers that witnessed the dawn. Eyes tired 
from the clamor and goading, and dim 
from the stress of the years, and hollowed 
by pain and foreboding, and strained by re- 
pression of tears. Sad eyes that were wea- 
ried and blighted, by visions of sieges and 
wars, now watch o'er a country united from 
the luminous slopes of the stars! 



Walt Mason 



THAT HOOSIER country's most 
prolific of folks who scale the heights 
of fame ; excelling in the arts pacific, 
they give their state a lustrous name. There 
old Jim Riley writes his verses, and wears, 
without dispute, the bays; George Ade must 
pack around six purses to hold the dough 
he gets for plays. Booth Tarkington is fat 
and wheezy, from dining on the market's 
best; he's living on the street called Easy, 
and gives his faculties a rest. Abe Martin 
also is a Hoosier, and hands out capsules 
good to see; and when you take 'em you 
will lose your suspender buttons in your 
glee. And Nicholson and many others are 
writing stuff that hits the spot; O, surely 
Indiana mothers a most unique and gifted 
lot! And I've received a little volume, con- 
cerning Indiana's crops; it gives the figures, 
page and column, and rambles on and never 
stops. It gives the yield of sweet potatoes, 
and corn and wheat and pigs and eggs, and 
cabbages and green tomatoes, and sauer 
kraut packed in wooden kegs. And never 
once in all the story are any of those writ- 
ers named; poor Indiana's truest glory is 
missed — she ought to be ashamed. 



In 

Indiana 



[143] 



The Better 
Land 



[144] 



Walt Mason 



THERE IS a better world, they say, 
where tears and woe are done away; 
there shining hosts in fields sublime 
are playing baseball all the time, and there 
(where no one ever sins) the home team 
nearly always wins. Upon that bright and 
sunny shore, we'll never need to sorrow 
more; no umpires on the field are slain, no 
games are called because of rain. So let 
us live that we may fly, on snowy pinions, 
when we die, to where the pitcher never 
falls, or gives a man first base on balls; 
where goose-eggs don't adorn the score, and 
shortstops fumble never more. 



Walt Mason 



HERE SHE comes, and she's a sight, 
in her gown of snowy white, thing 
of beauty and of charm, leaning on 
her lover's arm! Bright her eyes as sum- 
mer skies, and a glory in them lies, bor- 
rowed from the realms above, where the 
only light is love. And her lover looks 
serene, shaven, perfumed, groomed and 
clean; pride is glowing in his eyes, that 
he's won so fair a prize. Lover, lover, do 
your best, ne'er to wound that gentle breast; 
lover, never bring a smart, to that true and 
trusting heart! Strive to earn the love 
)'^ou've won, as the years their courses run, 
knowing ever, as you strive, that no man 
who is alive, and no man since Adam died, 
e'er deserved a fair June bride! 



The 'June 
Bride 



[145] 



At The 
Theatre 



[146] 



Walt Mason 



I WENT last night to see the play — a 
drama of the modern kind; and I am 
feeling tired today; I'd like to fumigate 
my mind. I'd hate to always recollect those 
tawdry jokes and vicious cracks; for I 
would fain be circumspect, and keep my 
brain as clean as wax. The playwright did 
his best to show that married life is flat and 
stale; that homely virtues are too slow to 
prosper in this earthly vale; he put Deceit 
on dress parade, and put a laurel crown on 
Vice; and Honor saw her trophies fade, and 
Truth was laid upon the ice. "It held the 
mirror up to life," and I, who saw it, home- 
ward went, and got a club and beat my 
wife, and robbed an orphan of a cent. If I 
saw many plays so rank, so full of dark and 
evil thought, I'd steal a blind man's savings 
bank, or swipe a widow's house and lot. 
You may be lustrous as a star, with all the 
virtues in you canned, but if you fool around 
with tar you'll blacken up to beat the band. 
You may be wholesome as the breeze that 
chortles through a country lane, but if you 
eat Limburger cheese, your friends will pass 
you with disdain. And every time you see 
a play, or read a book that makes a jest of 
love and home you throw away some part 
of you that was the best. 



Walt Mason 



NOW MY WIFE is reading papers on 
the Fall of Ancient Rome, and I find 
myself, her husband, doing all the 
work at home; I have washed the dinner 
dishes, I have swept the kitchen floor, and 
I've pretty near decided that I'll do it never 
more. For the soap gets in my whiskers 
and the grease gets on my clothes, and I'm 
always dropping dishes and big sadirons on 
my toes; and I cannot herd the children 
while I'm scrubbing, very well, two have 
vanished in the distance, three have fallen 
in the well ; and I'm always using coal oil 
where I should use gasoline, so the stove is 
blown to pieces, and the roof has holes, I 
ween. And the neighbors come and chaff 
me, laugh like horses at the door, as I slop 
around in sorrow, wiping gravy from the 
floor. So methinks I'll ask the missus after 
this to run our home, and I'll do a stunt of 
reading papers on the Fall of Rome. 



Club Day 
Dirge 



[•47] 



Walt Mason 



LIKE SOME lone mountain in the 
starry night, lifting its head snow- 
capped, severely white, into the si- 
lence of the upper air, serene, remote, and 
always changeless there! Firm as that 
mountain in the day of dread, when Free- 
dom wept, and pointed to her dead; grim 
as that mountain to the ruthless foe, wast- 
ing the land that wearied of its woe; strong 
as that mountain, 'neath his load of care, 
when brave men faltered in a sick despair. 
So does his fame, like that lone mountain, 
rise, cleaving the mists and reaching to the 
skies; bright as the beams that on its sum- 
mit glow, firm as its rocks and stainless as 
its snow! 



Washington 



[149] 



Hours and 
Ponies 



[150] 



Walt Mason 



EVERY HOUR that's gone's a dead 
one, and another comes and goes; in 
the graveyard of the ages hours will 
find their last repose; and the hour that's 
come and vanished never can be used again ; 
you may long to live it over, but the long- 
ing is in vain. Lasso, then, the hour that's 
w^ith you, ride it till its back is sore; you 
can have it sixty minutes — sixty minutes, 
and no more. Make it earn its board and 
lodging, make it haul your private wain, 
for when once it slips its halter it will 
never work again. So the hours like 
spotted ponies trot along in single file, and 
we haven't sense to catch them and to work 
them for a mile; we just loaf around and 
watch them, sitting idly in the sun, and the 
darkness comes and finds us with but 
mighty little done. 



Walt Mason 



A SPORT in New Jersey, whose name 
is mislaid, has issued a challenge, 
serene, undismayed. He claims he 
can shovel more pies in his hold than any 
man living, and puts up the gold to back 
up his challenge, so here is a chance for pie 
eating experts their fame to advance. Now 
here is a sport that I like to indorse; a man 
can eat pies and not work like a horse; no 
heart-breaking training for wearisome 
weeks; no sparring or wrestling with sub- 
sidized freaks; no rubbing or grooming or 
skipping the rope, no toning your nerves 
with some horse doctor's dope; no bones 
dislocated, or face pounded sore, no wear- 
ing gum boots in a whirlpool of gore. The 
pie eater's training no anguish implies; he 
starves till his stomach is howling for pies; 
he loosens his belt to the uttermost hole, 
and says to the umpire: "All right! Let 
her roll !" There's gold for the winner,'and 
honor and fame, and even the loser's ahead 
of the game. 



The Pie 

Raters 



[iSi] 



Poor 
Father 



Walt Mason 



[152] 



CHILDREN, HUSH! for father's 
resting; he is sitting, tired and sore, 
with his feet upon the table and his 
hat upon the floor. He is wearied and ex- 
hausted by the labors of the day; he has 
talked about the tariff since the dawn was 
cold and gray; he has lost eight games of 
checkers, for his luck today was mean, and 
that luck was still against him when he 
bucked the slot machine; so his nerves are 
under tension, and his brow is dark with 
care, and the burdens laid upon him seem 
too great for him to bear. Stop the clock, 
for it annoys him; throttle that canary bird; 
take the baby to the cellar, where its howl- 
ing won't be heard ; you must speak in whis- 
pers, children, for your father's tired and 
sore, and he seems to think the ceiling is 
some kind of cuspidor. Oh, he's broken 
down and beaten by the long and busy day; | 
he's been sitting in the feedstore on a bale 
of prairie hay, telling how the hungry graft- j 
ers have the country by the throat, how the 
tariff on dried apples robs the poor man 
of his coat, how this nasty polar rumpus 
might be settled once for all — and his feet 
are on the table, and his back's against the 
wall; let him find his home a quiet and a 
heart-consoling nest, for the father's worn 
and weary, and his spirit longs for rest. 



Walt Mason 



THE MERCHANT said, in caustic 
tones: "James Henry Charles Au- 
gustus Jones, please get your pay and 
leave the store; I will not need you any 
more. Important chores you seem to shun ; 
you're always leaving work undone; and 
when I ask the reason why, you heave a sad 
and soulful sigh, and idly scratch your dome 
of thought, and feebly say: "Oh, I forgot!" 
James Henry Charles Augustus Jones, this 
world's a poor resort for drones, for men 
with heads so badly set that their long suit 
is to forget. No man will ever write his 
name upon the shining wall of fame, or 
soar aloft on glowing wings because he 
can't remember things. I've noticed that 
such chaps as you remember when your pay 
is due; and when the noontime whistles 
throb, your memory is on the job; and when 
a holiday's at hand, your recollection isn't 
canned. The failures on life's busy way, 
the paupers, friendless, wan and gray, 
throughout their bootless days, like you, for- 
got the things they ought to do. So take 
your coat, and draw your bones, James 
Henry Charles Augustus Jones!" 



He Who 

Forgets 



[153] 



The 
Umpire 



[154] 



Walt Mason 



WHEN the home team loses a well 
fought game, it causes a lot of woe, 
but nothing is ever gained, my 
friends, by laying the umpire low; far bet- 
ter to let him fade away, and die of his 
soul's remorse, than to muss the diamond 
with his remains, or sit on his pulseless 
corpse. When I was younger I always 
slew the umpire whose work was bum, and 
now when I go to my downy couch, the 
ghosts of the umpires come, and moan and 
gibber around my bed and rattle their flesh- 
less bones, and call me names of the rank- 
est kind, in their deep, sepulchral tones. I 
always found, when an umpire died, and 
rode in the village hearse, that the fellow 
who came to take his place was sure to be 
ten times worse. 



Walt Mason 



THE GREAT Detective had returned; 
he'd been some years away, and I sup- 
posed that he was dead, and sleeping 
'neath the clay. Ah, ne'er shall I forget 
the joy it gave me thus to greet the king 
of all detectives in my rooms in Baker 
street! "I notice, Watson," Sherlock said, 
with smile serene and wide, "that since I 
left you, months ago, you've found your- 
self a bride." I had not spoken of the fact, 
so how did Sherlock know? I tumbled 
from my rockingchair, his knowledge 
jarred me so. "It's easy, Watson," said the 
sleuth; "deduction makes it plain; you ate 
an egg for breakfast and your chin still 
wears the stain; you haven't shaved for half 
a week — the stubble's growing blue — your 
pants are baggy at the knees, your necktie's 
on askew; your vest is buttoned crooked 
and your shirt is out of plumb; your hat 
has been in contact with a wad of chevying 
gum. You were something of a dandy in 
the good old days of yore — pass the dope, 
my dearest Watson; what's the use of say- 
ing more?" 



Sherlock 
Holmes 



[iSS] 



The 
Satictuary 



[156] 



Walt Mason 



I DO NOT LIKE the man who searches 
his mind for caustic things to say, about 
the preachers and the churches; he 
grows more common every day. The cynic 
is a scurvy tutor, whose head and creed are 
made of wood; he puts up little gods of 
pewter, and says that they "are just as 
good." He thinks that triumphs he is win- 
ning, and he emits a joyous laugh, if he can 
knock the underpinning from Faith, that is 
our rod and staff. He is a poor and tawdry 
victor, who would o'er dead religions walk; 
the church still lives, though fools have 
kicked her, since first she builded on a rock. 
I hear the mellow church bells ringing a 
welcome to that calm retreat; I hear the 
choir's sweet voices singing an anthem, rev- 
erent and sweet. And well I know the 
gentle pastor is pointing out the path to 
wend, and urging men to let the Master be 
evermore their guide and friend. And he, 
like all good men, is reaching for better, 
and for higher things; and so the message 
of his preaching — unlike the cynic's — com- 
fort brings. 



Walt Mason 



BENEATH the stones they sweetly 
sleep, the humble toilers of the press, 
no more to sorrow or to weep, no 
more to labor in distress. Here lies a youth 
upon whose tomb the tear of pity often 
drops; we had to send him to his doom, be- 
cause he wrote of "bumper crops." Here 
sleeps the golden years away the fairest of 
the human tribe; we slew him at the break 
of day, because he called himself *'ye 
scribe." Beneath that yew another sleeps, 
who did his work with smiling lips; we 
had to put him out for keeps when he re- 
ferred to "flying trips." And one, the 
noblest of them all, is resting on the wind- 
swept hill; in writing up a game of ball, 
he spoke of one who "hit the pill." Hard 
by the wall, where roses bloom, and breezes 
sway the clinging vines, that youth is sleep- 
ing in his tomb, who used the phrase, "along 
these lines." Today the sexton wields his 
spade, and digs a grave both deep and wide, 
where soon the stripling will be laid, who 
wrote about "the blushing bride."' 



The 

Newspaper 

Graveyard 



[157] 



My Lady's 
Hair 



[158] 



Walt Mason 



SHE WALKS in beauty like the night, 
as some romantic singer said; her eyes 
give forth a starry light, her lips are 
of a cherry red; across the floor she seems 
to float; she seems to me beyond compare, 
a being perfect — till I note the way that 
she's done up her hair. She must have 
toiled a half a day to build that large, un- 
vs^ieldy mass; she must have used a bale of 
hay, and strips of tin, and wire of brass; 
her sisters must have helped to braid, her 
mother wrought and tinkered there, and 
butler, cook and chambermaid, all helped 
to wrestle with her hair. And after all the 
grinding toil, and all the braiding and the 
fuss, the one effect is just to spoil her beauty, 
and make people cuss. She walks in beauty 
like the night where nights are most serene- 
ly fair; but, J. H. Caesar! she's a sight, 
when she's got on her Sunday hair! 



Walt Mason 



1 CANNOT sing today, my dear, about 
your locks of gold, for my fat head is 
feeling queer since I have caught a 
cold; and when a bard is feeling off, and 
full of pills and care, and has to sit around 
and cough, he sours on golden hair. I can- 
not sing today, dear heart, about your coral 
lips; the doctor's coming in his cart; he's 
making daily trips; he makes me sit in 
scalding steam, with blankets loaded down, 
and people say they hear me scream half 
way across the town; he makes me swal- 
low slippery elm and ink and moldy paste, 
and blithely hunts throughout the realm for 
things witii bitter taste. I cannot sing to- 
day, my love, about your swanlike neck, for 
I am sitting by the stove, a grim and ghastly 
wreck. And many poultices anoint the sum- 
mit of my head; I've coughed my ribs all 
out of joint, and I am largely dead; and so 
the mention of a harp just makes my blood 
run cold; some other blooming poet sharp 
must sing your locks of gold! Some other 
troubadour, my sweet, must sing to you in- 
stead, for I have earache in my feet and 
chilblains in my head! 



The Sick 
Minstrel 



[■59] 



Walt Mason 



The 
Beggar 



HE HAD a little organ there, the 
which I watched him grind; and 
oft he cried, as in despair: "Please 
help me — I am blind I" I muttered, as his 
music rose: "He plays in frightful luck!" 
And then I went down in my clothes, and 
gave him half a buck. A friend came rush- 
ing up just then, and said: "You make me 
ache! You are the easiest of men — that beg- 
gar is a fake! The fraud has money salted 
down^more than you'll ever earn ; he owns 
a business block in town, and he has farms 
to burn." I answered: "Though the beggar 
own a bankroll large and fat, I don't re- 
gret the half a bone I threw into his hat. 
I see a man who looks as though the world 
had used him bad; it sets my jaded heart 
aglow to give him half a scad. And though 
that beggar man may be the worst old fraud 
about, that makes no sort of odds to me; 
that isn't my lookout. I'll stake Tom, 
Harry, Dick or Jack, whene'er he comes 
my way; my conscience pats me on the 
back, and says that I'm O. K. But if a 
busted pilgrim came to work me, in dis- 
tress, and I inquired his age and name, his 
pastor's street address, and asked to see the 
documents to prove he told no lies, before 
I loosened up ten cents, my conscience 
would arise and prod me till I couldn't 
sleep, or eat a grown man's meal; and so 
the beggar man may keep that section of a 
wheel." 



[i6o] 



Walt Mason 



I LIKE to think that when I'm dead, 
my restless soul unchained, the things 
that worry my fat head will then all 
be explained. This fact a lot of sorrow 
brings, throughout this weary land; there 
are so many, many things, we do not under- 
stand! Oh, why is Virtue oft oppressed, 
and scourged and beaten down, while Vice, 
with gems of East and West, is flaunting 
through the town? And why is childhood's 
face with tears of sorrow often stained? 
When I have reached the shining spheres, 
these things will be explained. Why does 
the poor man go to jail, because he steals a 
trout, while wealthy men who steal a whale 
quite easily stay out? Why does affliction 
dog the man who earns two bones a day, 
who, though he try the best he can, can't 
drive the wolf away? Why does the weary 
woman sew, to earn a pauper's gain, while 
scores of gaudy spendthrifts blow their 
wealth for dry champagne? Why do we 
send the shining buck to heathen in Cathay, 
while in the squalid alley's muck white feet 
have gone astray? Such questions, in a mot- 
ley crowd, at my poor mind have strained; 
but when I sit upon a cloud, these things 
will be explained. 



Looking 
Forward 



[i6i] 



ne Depot 
Loafers 



[162] 



Walt Mason 



THE RAILWAY station in our town 
is seedy, commonplace and plain; 
yet scores of people rustle down and 
gather there to meet each train. The wait- 
ing room is bleak and bare, a place of never- 
ending din; yet fifty loafers gather there 
each day to see the train come in. The sta- 
tion agent's life is sad; the loafers made it 
grim and gray; they drive the poor man 
nearly mad, for they are always in the way. 
The passengers can only sob as they their 
townward way begin, for they must strug- 
gle through the mob that's there to see the 
train come in. The men who have their 
work to do are hindered in a hundred ways; 
in vain they weep and cry out "Shoo!" they 
can't disperse the loafing jays. These loaf- 
ers always are the same ; they toil not, neith- 
er do they spin; they have no other end or 
aim, than just to see the train come in. 
I've traveled east, I've traveled west, 
and every station in the land appears to 
have its loaferfest, its lazy, idle, useless 
band; I know the station loafer well; 
he has red stubble on his chin; he has an 
ancient, fishlike smell; he lives to see 
the train come in. Oh, Osier, get your 
chloroform, and fill your glass syringe 
again, and come and try to make things 
warm for those who bother busy men! For 
loafers, standing in the way, when standing 
is a yellow sin! For those who gather, day 
by day, to see a one-horse train come in I 



Walt Mason 



HE TOILED and sweated half his life 
to hang rich garments on his wife. 
"I haven't time to cut a dash," he 
said, "but I will blow the cash to let those 
swelled-up neighbors know that I have got 
the cash to blow." And so his good wife 
wore her furs, and dress parade was always 
hers; she had her gems from near and far, 
and glittered like an auto-car; she had a 
new and wondrous gown for every "func- 
tion" in the town; her life seemed sunny, 
gay and glad, this wife who was her hus- 
band's ad. One night, his day of labor 
o'er, he found her weeping at the door, and 
when he asked her to explain, she stopped a 
while the briny rain, and cried: "This life 
my spirit fags! I'm tired of wearing flossy 
rags I I'm tired of chasing through the 
town, a dummy in a costly gown! I'd 
rather wear a burlap sack, or leather flynet 
on my back — and have you with me as of 
yore — than all the sables in the store! And 
if you really love your wife, you'll get back 
to the simple life. Don't try to gather all 
the dough that's minted in this world be- 
low; just earn enough to pay the freight, 
and let us live in simple state, in some neat 
shanty far away from pomp and fuss and 
vain display — some hut among the cockle- 
burs, remote from jewelry and furs!" 



The Foolish 
Husband 



[163] 




'Boys (Jum'em!) luill be boys!" 



Walt Mason 



TONIGHT the boys will take the town, 
and doubtless turn it upside down; 
they'll sport around with joyous zest, 
and knock the landscape galley west; and 
when the morning comes I'll see my buggy 
in an apple tree; the sidewalk piled upon 
the lawn, the hens with all their feathers 
gone ; I'll hear my trusty milkcow yell down 
at the bottom of the well, while Dobbin 
stands upon the roof and waves for help a 
frantic hoof. Last year the boys wrought 
while I slept, and in the morn I screamed 
and wept, when looking at the work they'd 
done, I said : "Next year I'll get a gun, and 
watch for these michievous souls, and shoot 
the darlings full of holes." But granny 
heard me, and she said: "While water's 
cheap, go soak your head; you once were 
young yourself, by George! and people 
voted you a scourge; you played so many 
fiendish tricks, you filled so many hats with 
bricks, that terror came to every one when 
you weilt forth to have some fun. The 
village pastor used to say: 'When that 
young rascal comes my way, I always beat 
a swift retreat — I'd rather have the prickly 
heat!'" And so I haven't bought a gun; 
and so the boys may have their fun; and if 
the morning should disclose the chimney 
filled with garden hose, the watchdog 
painted green and brown, the henhouse 
standing upside down, I'll make no melan- 
choly noise, but say: "Boys (durn 'em!) 
will be boys!" 



Hallowe*en 



[i6s] 



Walt Mason 



Rienzt 

to the 

Romans 



HE STOOD ERECT, and having seen 
that artists for some magazine had 
sketched him in his proper pose, he 
cleared his throat, and blew his nose, and 
said: "Hi, Romans, you are slaves! You've 
not the price to buy your shaves! The good 
old sun's still on the turf, and his last beam 
falls on a serf! Great Scott, my friends, is 
freedom dead? O w^hence and whither do 
we tread? I view the future with alarm! 
We tremble 'neath the tyrant's arm, and 
ye may tremble, sons of Rome, until the 
muley cows come home, but you will still 
be in the hole, unless some fiery, dauntless 
soul, like me, shall lead you from the wreck, 
and soak the tyrant in the neck! And here 
I stand to cut the ice! I'm ready for the 
sacrifice! I'll save you, if a Roman can! 
As candidate for councilman, I ask your 
votes, and if I win I'll swat the tyrant on 
the chin. I'll represent the fourteenth 
ward, and represent it good and hard, and 
drive the grafters from their place, and 
kick the tryant in the face! Corruption in 
our Rome will die, if you'll support your 
Uncle Ril" 



[i66] 



Walt Mason 



land, 
band. 



A SORREL COLT, one pleasant day, 
ran round and round a stack of hay, 
and kicked its heels, and pawed the 
and reared and jumped to beat the 
The older horses stood around and 
swallowed fodder by the pound, and gave 
no notice to the kid that gaily round the 
haystack slid. I loafed along and mur- 
mured, then: "If horses were as mean as 
men, some old gray workhorse, stifif and 
sour, would jaw that colt for half an hour; 
methinks I hear that workhorse say: 'You 
think you're mighty smooth and gay, and 
you are fresh and sporty now, but when 
they hitch you to the plow, and strap a har- 
ness on your back, and work you till your 
innards crack, and kick you when you want 
to balk, and slug you with a chunk of rock, 
and cover you with nasty sores, and leave 
you freezing out of doors — O, then you 
won't kick up your heels! You'll know, 
then, how a workhorse feels!' But horses 
have no croaking voice, to chill the colt that 
would rejoice ; no graybeard plug will leave 
its feed to make the heart of childhood 
bleed; no dismal prophecies are heard, no 
moral homilies absurd, where horses stand 
and eat their hay, and so the colts may run 
and play!" 



The Sorrel 
Colt 



[167] 



The 

Sexton '/ 
Inn 



[i68] 



Walt Mason 



ONLY A LITTLE longer, and the 
journey is done, my friend 1 Only 
a little further, and the road will 
have an endl The shadows begin to length- 
en, the evening soon will close, and it's ho 
for the Inn of the Sexton, the inn where 
we'll all repose. The inn has no Bridal 
Chamber, no suites for the famed or great; 
the guests, when they go to slumber, are all 
of the same estate; the chambers are small 
and narrow, the couches are hard and cold, 
and the grinning, fleshless landlord is not to 
be bribed with gold. A sheet for the proud 
and haughty, a sheet for the beggar guest; 
a sheet for the blooming maiden — a sheet 
\oT us all, and rest! No bells at the dawn 
of morning, no rap at the chamber door, 
but silence is there, and slumber, for ever 
and ever more. Then ho for the Inn of the 
Sexton, the inn where we all must sleep, 
when our hands are done with their toiling, 
and our eyes have ceased to wcepl 



Walt Mason 



1 BOUGHT me a suit of the Sears- 
buck brand, they said it was tailored 
and sewed by hand; they said it was 
woven of finest wool, and couldn't be torn 
by an angry bull ; they said it was fine, and 
would surely last, till Gabriel tooteth the 
final blast. It was ten cents cheaper than 
suits I'd bought, from local dealers, who 
seemed quite hot, and shed a bucket of 
briny tears, when I bought my clothes of 
the Sawbuck Rears. I wore that suit when 
the day was damp, and it shrunk to the size 
of a postage stamp; the coat split up and 
the vest split down and I scared the horses 
all over town, for the buttons popped and 
the seams they tore, and the stiches gave, 
with a sullen roar. And I gave that suit 
to a maiden small, who found it handy to 
dress her doll. 



Mail 

Order 

Clothes 



[169] 



Rvening 



Walt Mason 



[170] 



IFE'S LITTLE DAY is fading fast; 
upon the mountain's brow the sink- 
ing sun is gleaming red; the shadows 
lengthen now; the twilight hush comes on 
apace, and soon the evening star will light 
us to those chambers dim where dreamless 
sleepers are. And when the curfew bell is 
rung, that calls us all to rest, and we have 
left all worldly things, at Azrael's behest, 

may some truthful mourner rise, and say 
of you or me: "Gee whiz! I'm sorry that 
he's dead! He was a honey bee! Whate'er 
his job he did his best; he put on all his 
steam, in every stunt he had to do he was a 
four-horse team. He thought that man was 
placed on earth to help his fellowguys; he 
never wore a frosty face, and balked at 
weeping eyes; the hard luck pilgrim always 
got a handout at his door, and any friend 
could help himself to all he had in store; 
he tried to make his humble home the gay- 
est sort of camp, till Death, the king of 
bogies, came and slugged him in the lamp. 

1 don't believe a squarer guy existed in the 
land, and Death was surely off his base when 
this galoot was canned!" 



Walt Mason 



THE STARS will come back to the 
azure vault when the clouds are all 
blown away; and the sun will come 
back when the night is done, and give us 
another day; the cows will come back from 
the meadows lush, and the birds to their 
trysting tree, but the money I paid to a 
mining shark will never come back to me! 
The leaves will come back to the naked 
boughs, and the flowers to the frosty brae; 
the spring will come back like a blooming 
bride, and the breezes that blow in May; 
and the joy will come back to the stricken 
heart, and laughter and hope and glee, but 
the money I blew for some mining stock 
will never come back to me! 



They All 
Come Back 



[171] 



The 

Cussing 

Habit 



Walt Mason 



[172] 



THE JACKAL is a beastly beast; and 
when it hankers for a feast, it has no 
use for nice fresh meat; the all-fired 
fool would rather eat some animal that died 
last year; and so the jackal, far and near, is 
shunned by self-respecting brutes, and 
slugged with rocks, and bricks, and boots. 
And men whose language is decayed, who 
make profanity a trade, are like the jackal 
of the wild, that hunts around for things 
defiled. In all your rounds you'll never 
find a healthy, clean and gentle mind pos- 
sessed by any son of wrath whose language 
needs a Turkish bath. On great occasions 
there's excuse for turning ring-tailed cuss- 
words loose; the Father of his Country 
swore at Monmouth, and then cussed some 
more; that patient soul, the Man of Uz, 
with boils so thick he couldn't buzz, ripped 
off some language rich and brown, until old 
Bildad called him down. Great men, be- 
neath some awful stroke let loose remarks 
that fairly smoke, and we forgive them as 
we write the story of their deeds of might. 
But little men, who swear, and swear, and 
thus pollute our common air, are foul and 
foolish as the frogs that trumpet in their 
native bogs. 



JOHN BULL looks forth upon the 
main, and heaves a sigh, as though in 
pain; he wipes away the tears and 
cries, in sorrow: "Blawst my blooming 
eyes! There's fungus growing on my 
realm! I need a hustler at the helm! 
These once progressive British isles are left 
behind a million miles; it was a blamed 
Italian chap that made that wireless mes- 
sage trap; a Frenchman made the whole 
world blink by flying safely o'er the drink; 
a Dutchman built a big balloon, in which 
he'll journey to the moon; and now I'm 
told, lud bless my soul, a Yankee's gone 
and found the Pole! Have Britons lost 
their steam and vim? Are we no longer 
in the swim? Are we content to tag be- 
hind, and trust in fate, and go it blind? 
Is this our England lying dead, with candles 
at her feet and head? Has Genius torn 
her robe and died, and have we naught to 
brace our pride?" A voice comes sighing 
o'er the land — a voice John Bull can un- 
derstand; a female voice that's bright and 
gay, and in his ears it seems to say: "Cheer 
up! The gods are with you yet — ^you al- 
ways have the suffragette 1" 



John Bull 



[173] 



Walt Mason 



An 
Oversight 



WE'RE MAKING laws, with lots 
of noise, to keep from harm our 
precious boys. The curfew bell 
booms out at eight, and warns the lads to 
pull their freight for home and bed and 
balmy sleep, while wary cops their vigils 
keep. The cheap toy pistol's down and out; 
we won't have things like that about; and 
boys who'd hear the pistol's toot must sit 
and watch their parents shoot. The cigar- 
ette at last is canned; the children of this 
happy land can buy such coffin-nails no 
more, which sometimes makes the darlings 
sore. Each year new laws and statutes 
brings, to shield them from corrupting 
things. It's strange that we should over- 
look the screaming blood-and-thunder book, 
the wild and wooly, red-hot yarn, that 
Johnnie reads behind the barn. The tales 
of bandits who have slain a cord of men, 
and robbed a train; of thieves who break 
away from jail, with punk detectives on 
their trail; of long haired scouts and men 
of wrath who nothing fear — except a bath. 
Such yarns as these our Johnnie reads; they 
brace him up for bloody deeds; and when 
he can he takes the trail, and ends his bright 
career in jail. So, while we're swatting 
evil things, and putting little boys on wings, 
let's swat the book that leaves a stain upon 
the reader's soul and brain. 



[174] 



Walt Mason 



HE HAD journeyed, sore and weary, 
over deserts wide and dreary; 
through the snows of far Sibery ihe 
had dragged his frozen form; he had 
searched the site of Eden, been through 
Kansas, wild and bleedin'; in the far-off 
hills of Sweden he had faced the winter 
storm. In the vain pursuit of glory, hoping 
he would live in story, he had hoofed it to 
Empory, from Toronto on the lake; he had 
heard land agents rattle through the 
suburbs of Seattle, he had seen the Creek 
of Battle, where they live on sawdust cake. 
Fate was kind, and just to prove her he had 
journeyed to Vancouver, where the emi- 
grant and mover pitch their tents upon the 
street; he had roamed the broad Savannah, 
he had voted in Montana; hunting with 
the mighty Bwana, Afric's jungles knew 
his feet. He had sung the boomer's ditty 
down in Oklahoma City, thinking it a 
blooming pity that the town had such a 
name; he had mined in cold Alaska, farmed 
with Bryan in Nebraska, and was never 
known to ask a least advantage in the game. 
To his native town returning, all reporters 
there were yearning to receive a statement 
burning, from this calm intrepid soul; not 
of fights or sieges gory was the hero's sim- 
ple story; "I have but one claim to glory — 
I have never found the Pole I'* 



The 
Traveler 



[175] 



Saturday 
Night 



[176] 



Walt Mason 



SATURDAY NIGHT, and the week's 
work done, and the Old Man home 
with a bunch of mon'! You see him 
sit on the cottage porch, and he puffs away 
at a five-cent torch, while the good wife 
sings at her evening chores, and the chil- 
dren gambol around outdoors. The Old 
Man sits on his work-day hat, and he 
doesn't envy the plutocrat; his debts are 
paid and he owns his place,, and he'll look 
a king in the blooming face;, his hands are 
hard with the brick and loam, but his heart 
is soft with the love of home! Saturday 
night, and it's time for bed! And the kids 
come in with a buoyant tread; and they 
hush their noise at the mother's look, as she 
slowly opens a heavy book, and reads the 
tale of the stormy sea, and the voice that 
quieted Galilee. Then away to bed and 
the calm repose that only honesty ever 
knows. Saturday night, and the world is 
still, and it's only the erring who finds 
things ill; there is sweet content and a 
sweeter rest, where a good heart beats in a 
brave man's breast. 



Walt Mason 



SMOKING is a filthy habit, and a big, 
fat, black cigar advertises that you're 
straying from the Higher Life afar. 
I have walked in summer meadows where 
the sunbeams flashed and broke, and I never 
saw the horses or the sheep or cattle smoke; 
I have watched the birds, with wonder, 
when the world with dew was wet, and I 
never saw a robin puffing at a cigarette; I 
have fished in many rivers when the sucker 
crop was ripe, and I never saw a catfish 
pulling at a briar pipe. Man's the only liv- 
ing creature that parades this vale of tears, 
like a blooming traction engine, blowing 
smoke from mouth and ears. If Dame 
Nature had intended, when she first in- 
vented man, that he'd smoke, she would 
have built him on a widely diff'rent plan; 
she'd have fixed him with a damper and a 
stovepipe and a grate; he'd have had a 
smoke consumer that was strictly up-to-date. 
Therefore, let the erring mortal put his 
noisome pipe in soak — he can always get a 
new one if he feels he needs a smoke. 



Lady 
Nicotine 



{."^lll 




*'0 come, my Iwe, from ytur boixur in haste, ht us trim 
9ur sails for the ether ivaste, aivay, aiuayV 



Walt Mason 



OCOME, my love, for the world's at 
rest, and the sun's asleep in the cur- 
tained West, and the night breeze 
sighs from between the stars, and my air- 
ship waits by your window bars! We'll 
sail the sea of the waveless wind, we'll 
leave the earth and its dross behind, and 
watch its lights from the cloudy heights — 
O come, my love, on this best of nights! 
O come, my love, from your bower in 
haste, let us trim our sails for the ether 
waste, away, away, where the weary moan 
of the workday world is never known; 
where the only track is the track of wings 
that the skylark leaves when it soars and 
sings ! So come, my love ere the night is 
old, and the stars have paled, and the dawn 
is cold ; the ship can't wait for its precious 
freight, for it's costing a dollar a minute, 
straight. 



Up'tO'Date 
Serenade 



[179] 



The 
Consumer 



[1 80] 



Walt Mason 



THEY WILL tinker with the tariff 
till the rivers are gone dry, they will 
wrestle with the subject night and 
day; they'll be piling up the language when 
the snow begins to fly, they'll be fiddling in 
the same old weary way. O the grand old 
windy wonders who adorn the senate floor, 
till the windup of the world will be on 
deck; and there's just one thing that's cer- 
tain, that is sure for ever more; the consum- 
er always gets it in the neck. There is talk 
of hides and leather, and there's talk of 
nails and glue, there are weary wads of 
twaddle on cement; and the man from Bun- 
combe Corners stands and toots his loud ba- 
zoo, till his language in the ceiling makes 
a dent; no one in this martyred country 
knows how long this will endure, and there 
isn't any way the flood to check; and there's 
just one thing about it that is reasonably 
sure; the consumer always gets it in the 
neck. 



Walt Mason 



WHEN A DAMSEL has a steady 
who's a pretty decent man, and 
who shows a disposition to perform 
the best he can ; who is shy of sinful habits, 
and whose bosom holds no guile, and who 
labors in the vineyard with a gay and cheer- 
ful smile, then she shouldn't make him 
promise that he'll do a seraph stunt, when 
they've stood up at the altar with the 
preacher-man in front; and she shouldn't 
spring a lecture when he comes around to 
court, for a man is only human, and his 
wings are pretty short. When a maiden has 
a lover who is surely making good, who is 
winning admiration, who is sawing lots of 
wood, then she shouldn't make him promise 
that he'll be an angel boy when the wed- 
ding ceremony ushers in a life of joy; she 
should murmur: "He's a daisy, and we'll 
take things as they come; for a man is only 
human, and his halo's on the bum." 



Advice To 
A Damsel 



[i8i] 



A New 
Year Vow 



[182] 



Walt Mason 



I DON'T go much on gilded vows, for 
I have made them in the past, and they 
are with the bow-wow-wows — they 
were too all-fired good to last. And so I'll 
make one vow today: I'll simply try to do 
my best; that vow should help me on my 
way, for it embraces all the rest. I'll take 
the middle of the road, and always do the 
best I can, and pack along my little load, 
and try to be a manly man. A man may end 
his journey here too poor to buy a decent 
shroud, and planted be without a tear of 
mourning from the worldly crowd; but 
when he's in the judgment scale, he'll come 
triumphant from the test; no man has failed, 
no man can fail, who always, always does 
his best. And though my pathway be ob- 
scure, and void of honor and applause, and 
though the lean wolf of the moor to my 
cheap doorway nearer draws, I'll keep a 
stout heart in my breast, and follow up this 
simple plan; I'll always do my very best, 
and try to be a manly man. 



Walt Mason 



HE LABORED on the railway track; 
his task would break a horse's back; 
he tugged at things that weighed a 
ton, and all the time the summer sun 
blazed down and cooked him where he 
toiled, and still he worked, though fried 
and broiled. I grieved for this poor section 
man, who drank warm water from a can, 
and ate rye bread and greenish cheese, and 
had big blisters on his knees. "Ods fish!" 
quoth I, "when day is dead, methinks you 
straightway go to bed, too labor-worn to 
heave a sigh, as wounded soldiers go to die." 
"That's where you're off," the toiler said; 
"I'm in no rush to go to bed; you must be 
talking in a trance — tonight I'm going to a 
dance!" "Gadzooks!" thought I, "and eke 
ods blood! My tears have streamed, a 
briny flood, because of all the cares and 
woes the horny-handed toiler knows! And 
it would seem, from what I learn, that he 
has fun, and some to burn. Gadzooks 
again! It secmeth plain, that weeping in 
this world is vain!" 



The Stricken 
Toiler 



[183] 



The 
Lawbooks 



[184] 



Walt Mason 



THE LAWS are numerous as flies up- 
on a summer day; at making laws 
the statesmen wise still pound and 
pound away. No man on earth could recol- 
lect a list of all the laws; I tried it once — 
my mind is wrecked, and now you know the 
cause. Some gents who are in prison yet 
proclaim with angry shout that they are so 
with laws beset, they really can't stay out. 
"A man can't walk around a block," I heard 
a sad man wail, "but what the cops will 
round him flock, and chuck him into jail." 
I heard the butcher man repine, and weep, 
and rail at fate, because he had to pay a 
fine for being short on weight. I heard the 
corner grocer snort, and use some language 
sour, because they yanked him into court for 
selling moldy flour. The milkman bottled 
half the creek, and sold it on his route; he 
said: "The law just makes me sick," when 
friends had bailed him out. The laws are 
numerous as scales upon a fish, no doubt; 
and so some people are in jails, and simply 
can't stay out; but all the time and every- 
where one great truth stands out clear : The 
man who acts upon the square, has nothing 
much to fear. 



I'M WEARY now of Sherlock Holmes, 
and all the imitative crew; I'm tired 
of triumphs built upon a collar button, 
as a clew. The sleuth is always tall and 
thin, with nervous hands and hawk-like 
face; he scours the slums or moves around 
in marble halls, with equal grace; he al- 
ways takes some kind of dope or plays the 
flute or violin, and when he's billed for 
active work he glues false whiskers on his 
chin. He always has a Watson near, a tire- 
some chump, who sits and broods, the while 
the selling-plater sleuth reels off a string of 
platitudes. Detective yarns are all so stale! 
The plot is evermore the same; we always 
have the murdered man, with knives or bul- 
lets in his frame; the pantry window is un- 
locked; the safe's been opened with a file; 
suspicion shifts until it rests on every man 
within a mile; the local peelers blunder 
round, and ball things up in frightful shape, 
and then the Great Detective comes, with 
lens and rule and meas'ring tape; he crawls 
around upon the floor, examines all the 
water mains, and tastes the ashes in the 
stove, and sticks his nose into the drains, 
and then he says the problem's solved; 
forthwith he spends two weeks or more in 
showing Watson and the world how easy 
'tis to be a bore I 



Sleuths of 
Fiction 



[185] 



Walt Mason 



The Idle 
Question 



I'M TIRED of the bootless questions 
that rise in my vagrant mind; I gaze 
at the stars and wonder how many may 
be behind; a myriad worlds are whirling, 
concealed by the nearer spheres; and there 
they have coursed their orbits a million mil- 
lion years. I gaze at the spangled spaces, 
the bed of a billion stars, from the luminous 
veil of Venus, to the militant glare of Mars, 
and wonder, when all is ended, as ended all 
things must be, if the Captain will then re- 
member a poor little soul like me. I'm tired 
of the endless questions that come, and will 
not begone, when I face to the East and wit- 
ness the miracle of the dawn; the march of 
the shining coursers o'er forest and sea and 
land; the splendor of gorgeous colors ap- 
plied by the Captain's hand; the parting of 
crimson curtains afar in the azure steep ; the 
hush of a world-wide wonder, when even 
the zephyrs sleep. And I look on the birth 
of morning as millions have gazed before, 
and question the wave that questions the 
rocks and the sandy shore. "When all of 
these things are ended, as ended these things 
must be, will the Captain of all remember 
a poor little soul like me?'* 



[i86] 




^ 



c 

a 

E 



£ 

o 



Walt Mason 



TEN MILLION bones," said good 
John Dee, "will reach the Sunny 
South from me; this hookworm 
scourge, that ruins men, and lays a country 
waste again, must be suppressed at any cost 
— those broken men must not be lost! To 
make them feel like men once more, to 
drive gaunt Famine from their door, to 
make them like strong Saxons live, ten mil- 
lion bones I'll freely give. The victims of 
the hookworm scourge, the toilers at the 
loom and forge, the humble yeoman at his 
plow, may see some ray of comfort now! I 
shudder when I read the tales of ruin in 
those Southern vales; too tired to do the 
simplest chores, men lounge all day about 
their doors, and when the sun's low in the 
West, the whole caboodle go to rest. And 
thus these tillers of the soil burn mighty 
little of my oil. When this outrageous 
worm decamps, they'll trim the wicks and 
light the lamps, and read the books they 
have in stock, and all sit up till one o'clock. 
The hookworm's acted very mean in shut- 
ting off the kerosene, and so I'll send a good 
big roll, to put the blamed thing in the 
hole." 



ThePhilatp' 
thropist 



[187] 



Other Days 



[i88] 



Walt Maso n 



BACKWARD, turn backward, oh time, 
in thy flight, feed me on gruel again, 
just for tonight; I am so wearied of 
restaurant steaks, vitrified doughnuts and 
vulcanized cakes, oysters that sleep in a 
watery bath, butter as strong as Goliath of 
Gath; weary of paying for what I can't eat, 
chewing up rubber and calling it meat. 
Backward, turn backward, for weary I am! 
Give me a whack at my grandmother's jam ; 
let me drink milk that has never been skim- 
med, let me eat butter whose hair has been 
trimmed; let me but once have an old- 
fashioned pie, then I'll be willing to curl 
up and die; I have been eating iron filings 
for years — is it a wonder I'm melting in 
tears? 



Walt Mason 



THE YEAR'S growing ashen, and 
weary and gray; full soon he will 
cash in, and mosey away. A while 
yet he'll totter along to his grave; he's 
marked for the slaughter, and nothing can 
save. The year that is leaving seems 
weighted with woe; and Nature is griev- 
ing because he must go. The forests are 
sighing and moaning all day; the night 
winds are crying, upon their sad way; the 
gray clouds are taking a threatening shape ; 
the dead grass is shaking like billows of 
crape. Dame Nature is tender, and dirges 
she'll croon, regretting the splendor and 
glory of June; she knows that tomorrow 
the old year will sleep ; she knows that the 
sorrow of parting is deep. In this world, 
O never can friends with us stay! Some 
loved one forever is going away! And that 
is the story of people and years; a morn- 
ing of glory, an evening of tears; an hour 
of caressing, a call at the dawn, a prayer 
and a blessing, and then they are gone. 



The 

Passing 

Year 



[189] 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

015 940 905 3 " 



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